| The European Union's highest court ruled Thursday that a lower court made several mistakes when it overturned regulatory approval for Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG to combine their music units to form the world's second-largest record label. This prolongs a twisted legal saga over the legality of the 2004 merger after independent music companies complained that the EU's antitrust authority was wrong to allow the number of major record labels shrink from five to four. The European Court of Justice on Thursday set aside a 2006 ruling from the Court of First Instance that largely backed the independents, telling the lower court to re-examine the case again. The Court of First Instance ruling overturning the European Commission's approval for the deal forced regulators to examine it again to prove that it would not create or strengthen a dominant position in the music markets of Europe. The European Commission cleared the deal a second time in November. But Sony BMG appealed the 2006 ruling to an even higher court, the European Court of Justice, which said Thursday that judges had made "errors of law" in the 2006 ruling. |
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