FRAND to address competition issues posed by major digital platforms?

Major digital platforms (MDPs) such as App Store, Amazon e-commerce site, Google search engine, or Facebook have increasingly shown their significance in our daily lives. The convenience they bring, nonetheless, may distract us from noticing how they are capable of executing their powers to influence different markets or even politics on a global scale. While competition (antitrust) law struggles to deal with the advanced, cutting-edge nature of MDPs, some scholars and antitrust authorities have conceived of applying FRAND (or a quasi-FRAND model), which has proved considerably successful in the field of telecommunication standardization, as a regulatory measure to control unprecedented powers of MDPs. Having said that, to that end, certain complicated policy and technical issues must be analysed and addressed thoroughly.

The full paper was published by the European Competition Journal:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17441056.2020.1834993?journalCode=recj20

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Abstract

Major digital platforms (MDPs) such as App Store, Amazon e-commerce site, Google search engine, or Facebook have increasingly shown their significance in our daily lives. The convenience they bring, nonetheless, may distract us from noticing how they are capable of executing their powers to influence different markets or even politics on a global scale. While competition (antitrust) law struggles to deal with the advanced, cutting-edge nature of MDPs, some scholars and antitrust authorities have conceived of applying FRAND (or a quasi-FRAND model), which has proved considerably successful in the field of telecommunication standardization, as a regulatory measure to control unprecedented powers of MDPs. Having said that, to that end, certain complicated policy and technical issues must be analysed and addressed thoroughly.

Keywords Digital platforms; Multi-sided platforms; GAFAM; FRAND; Antitrust; Intellectual property; Essential facilities doctrine; P2B Regulation

Summary

1. Power of Major Digital Platforms

“Digital platform” could be understood as an online mechanism that allows interaction of different user groups to generate values for at least one group. Google search, Amazon e-commerce site, Microsoft Windows, Facebook social network and Apple's App Store are digital platforms; and given their prominence and influence, they can be considered “major digital platforms”. MDPs have shown three forms of power:

• MDPs serve as a gatekeeper who control the market access.

• MDPs may leverage their “home advantage” to outperform their own business users in adjacent markets.

• MDPs collect and exploit a huge amount of data from every transaction conducted via their platforms, which later may either cause a huge ...

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