Abstract

The recent Eu Court of Justice's ruling in Deroo-Blanquart/Sony Europe Limited did not come as a bolt from the blue: various national courts have already analyzed the legitimacy of pre-installed software bundled with a computer on the basis of different grounds from a consumer protection standpoint. The Court of Justice's preliminary ruling has with no doubt provided a clear and important signal under a consumer protection angle, stating that this practice cannot be considered a per se unfair commercial practice, especially where the consumer has been provided with a proper pre-contractual information. However, limiting the analysis only to the consumerist's perspective and leaving in the shadow the inherently critical technological structure of pre-installed software may not grasp the core issues underlying the case. Therefore, in this article, starting from the conclusions reached by the Court of Justice and after having briefly contextualized it in the light of relevant national case-law, space will be left to further possible reflections from a competition standpoint that might come from the case under discussion.