Bachelor Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Law, grade: 1, University of Linz, course: Bachelorseminar, language: English, abstract: According to Black's Law dictionary, competition is the struggle for commercial advantage. The efforts taken of companies to achieve the respective commercial advantages can be - especially in afree market economy - ample. Let's illustrate this fact by the following examples: Suppose that a automobile manufacturer, incensed by a car magazine's constant ridicule of its cars, launches a rival magazine with a similar name and layout, copies the other paper's stories,lures away the employees, advertisers and subscribers of the other magazine by offering them higher wages and lower advertising and subscribing rates and finally succeeds in running its criticalopponent out of business. Has the automobile manufacturer engaged in any unfair trade practices for which the owners of the car magazine may seek legal remedy? Or has the manufacturer acted ina permissible way to the magazine's attack? Furthermore, could the magazine be said to have engaged in an unfair trade practice by permanently ridiculing the cars and its manufacturer2?How can a merger between two or more businesses which are on the same market level and which manufacture similar products in the same geographic region influence consumers? What if two competitors agree in the artificial setting of prices at a certain level, contrary to the workin...