New technologies serving antitrust

Head of FAS Igor Artemiev stressed the need to use advanced developments in the work of the regulator

“Science opens us new directions for developing the antimonopoly policy”, pointed out Head of FAS on 6 December at the II International Research-to-Practice Conference on “Antimonopoly Policy: Science, Practice, Education” that is taking place at “Skolkovo” Innovative Centre.

He outlined the challenges of the new time, among which violations by international corporations in the social field are especially dangerous. “Sometimes operations of transnational corporations – is a question of survival for entire nations”, emphasized Igor Artemiev, talking about anticompetitive practices of pharmaceutical companies, which include abusing patent protection, market monopolization and price dictation.

He also reminded on introducing a mechanism of forced licensing of medicine in Russia in case of an emergency: fixing monopolistically high price for drugs in the course of an epidemics and for unique vital drugs as well as refusal to supply them.

Regarding the balance of the antimonopoly policy and the patent law, Head of FAS underlined that “undoubtedly, intellectual property is untouchable, but as soon as the goods are launched in circulation, antimonopoly standards apply”.

FAS proposes to keep immunities set in Articles 10 and 11 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”; and underlines that the standards of the antimonopoly law are applicable to goods circulation manufactured with use of exclusive rights.

“Combining humanistic and economic interests is an objective of the XXI century”, said Igor Artemiev. In his opinion, it is necessary to combine companies’ desire to gain profit with fair market conduct.

He covered the issue of the most dangerous economic crimes – cartels that reached the international level and pointed out that the “antimonopoly bodies should unite and devise methods on exposing and suppressing international cartels”.

Head of the antimonopoly authority called upon using new technologies in public procurement, transferring them into the electronic form. He also pointed that the latest developments enable creating a global benchmarking system, which will help see and compare prices across the world on international information platforms.

Summing up his speech, Igor Artemiev stated: “The world has changed and the regulators have not. Science will tell us where and how we should move forward”.