Chillin'Competition

Valentine Korah left us a few days ago. It has been very moving to hear and read the tributes of those who worked with and were close to her. When I entered the competition law world, Professor Korah was no longer as active as she used to. However, her mark and contributions to the discipline were impossible to miss. She had greatly contributed to shaping the law and institutions I was discovering in the mid-2000s.

Professor Korah’s work on, inter alia, vertical restraints and technology transfer agreements was so foundational that there was simply no way around it. To this day, I still find interesting stuff in her articles. It is not unusual that I realise that something that I believed was a novel insight was already there, black on white, eloquently put.

If there is something I would highlight about Professor Korah’s legacy, is that how passionate she was about research in general and competition law in particular. The first memory that comes to mind is that of her sitting in the first row of a seminar room at UCL, well into her 80s, willing to learn from younger scholars, and keen to improve their work. May she rest in peace.