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The paper aims to make a general presentation of some of the interactions between Intellectual Property Law and Competition Law focusing on the case of patent rights and their effects on the qualification of their owner's position under the provisions of art. 6 of the Competition Law and art. 102 TFEU. In order to highlight these interactions we chose to individualize the case of standard essential patents, in what these are concerned the interactions being more evident, documented in both literature and practice and also of great current interest. Starting with the delineation of the constitutive elements of the abuse of dominance, the paper identifies how these apply to patents, how these are potentiated in what concerns standard essential patents and what are the effects of the application, in what these are concerned, of the rules regarding abuse of dominance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If a patent gives its holder an exclusive right over the products or procedures it protects and if a standard is a document that sets out requirements for everybody to follow in order to properly obtain a certain result, a standard essential patent may only be a peculiar and complex concept. Thus, a standard essential patent (SEP) is a patent that protects a product or more often a procedure that is essential to a standard, in the way that it is impossible to manufacture standard-compliat products such as smartphones, tablets and other gadgets without using technology covered by SEPs. To alleviate any competition concerns and to ensure that the benefits of standardization are promulgated, SEP holders are required to commit to licensing their SEPs on FRAND (fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory) terms, a condition that aims to ensure that the technology incorporated in a standard is accessible to the standard users and that the SEP holders are financially rewarded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]