Activision Blizzard Germany GmbH v European Commission.
Date: 2011-02-10
51. It should be recalled at the outset that it is clear from Article 225 EC and the first paragraph of Article 58 of the Statute of the Court of Justice that the Court has no jurisdiction to establish the facts or, in principle, to examine the evidence which the General Court accepted in support of those facts. Provided that the evidence has been properly obtained and that the general principles of law and the rules of procedure relating to the burden of proof and the taking of evidence have been observed, it is for the General Court alone to assess the value which should be attached to the evidence produced before it. Save where the clear sense of the evidence has been distorted, that appraisal does not, therefore, constitute a point of law which is subject, as such, to review by the Court of Justice (see, inter alia, Case C-419/08 P Trubowest Handel and Makarov  v Council and Commission  [2010] ECR I‑0000, paragraphs 30 and 31 and the case-law cited).
52. In the present case, Activision Blizzard submits in a sufficiently detailed manner that the General Court’s assessment of those faxes is at odds with their wording. In those circumstances, the second ground of appeal is – contrary to the assertions made by the Commission – admissible.
53. As regards the merits of that ground of appeal, it should be pointed out that, according to settled case-law, the distortion must be obvious from the documents in the Court’s file, without there being any need to carry out a new assessment of the facts and the evidence (see Case C‑551/03 P General Motors  v Commission  [2006] ECR I-3173, paragraph 54; Trubowest Handel and Makarov  v Council and Commission , paragraph 32; and Case C-399/08 P Commission  v Deutsche Post  [2010] ECR I-0000, paragraph 64).
54. Even though it would be possible to interpret the faxes in question in the manner argued for by Activision Blizzard, it should nevertheless be stated that that is not the only way in which the wording of those faxes could be construed and that the different interpretation of those faxes adopted by the General Court does not reveal any distortion of their content. In particular, the line of argument set out by Activision Blizzard in support of its second ground of appeal does not bring to light any substantive inaccuracy in the General Court’s reading of those faxes.
57. It should be borne in mind in that connection that the review carried out by the Court in order to assess the present ground of appeal – that the evidence produced in the form of those faxes was distorted – is restricted to ascertaining that, in finding on the basis of those faxes that CD-Contact Data had participated in an illegal agreement intended to limit parallel trade in general, the General Court had not manifestly exceeded the limits of a reasonable assessment of those faxes. The task of the Court of Justice in the present case is not, therefore, to assess independently whether the Commission has established such participation to the requisite legal standard and thus discharged the burden of proof necessary to show that the rules of competition law were infringed, but to determine whether, in finding that that was actually so, the General Court construed those faxes in a manner manifestly at odds with their wording, which is not the case.
77. First of all, the Court has stated that, in order to arrive at a finding that an agreement prohibited under Article 81(1) EC has been concluded, it is not necessary in all cases to determine whether a system for monitoring and imposing penalties had been set up (see to that effect, inter alia, Joined Cases C-2/01 P and C-3/01 P BAI and Commission  v Bayer  [2004] ECR I-23, paragraph 84).
84. In so far as Activision Blizzard claims, in the alternative, that insufficient reasons were stated for the judgment under appeal, it should be borne in mind that, according to established case-law, the obligation to state reasons does not require the General Court to provide an account which addresses exhaustively, one after the other, all the arguments put forward by the parties to the case. The reasoning may therefore be implicit, on condition that it enables the persons concerned to know the reasons for the General Court’s decision and provides the Court of Justice with sufficient material for it to exercise its power of review (see, inter alia, the judgment of 22 May 2008 in Case C-266/06 P Evonik Degussa  v Commission , paragraph 103, and Case C-583/08 P Gogos  v Commission  [2010] ECR I-0000, paragraph 30 and the case-law cited).