Christopher Thomas

Christopher Thomas practises across the full range of competition law as well as handling contentious EU proceedings more generally.

In the antitrust field, Christopher assists clients in investigations and merger control procedures at EU and national level, and around the world. This includes the special regimes applying under the DMA and the FSR. He has broad experience across many industry sectors, from cartels and other hard-core conduct to competitor cooperation, distribution, licensing, and beyond. He has a particular focus on the application of the competition law rules in complex technological, data-driven or IP-sensitive situations.

Christopher also handles contentious EU proceedings before the European Commission and other EU agencies across a range of different legal regimes. In particular, he represents clients in European Commission investigations under the Digital Services Act and in the consumer protection field (the CPC Regulation), as well as defending clients in proceedings under the ESMA Regulation. He regularly appears as an advocate before the General Court and the Court of Justice of the EU, following on from investigations by EU agencies or in standalone challenges to EU or national measures.

That said, Christopher has particular experience of the antitrust issues affecting industries in which technology, data and intellectual property are critical. He has been closely involved in many of the leading cases in this area, whether relating to interoperability, the enforcement of standard essential patents, patent ambush, geo-blocking, performing rights licensing, digital advertising, online search, privacy, platforms, anti-piracy TPMs or any number of other issues.