The Qihoo/Tencent Dispute in the Instant Messaging Market: The First Milestone in the Chinese Competition Law Enforcement?

Abstract

Qihoo/Tencent is the most high-profile and complicated anti-monopoly lawsuit before the Chinese Court since the enactment of the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law in 2008. Qihoo complained to the court, alleging that Tencent had abused its dominant position by firstly leveraging its market power from the market for instant messaging software products onto the market for internet security software products by forcing its users to uninstall the plaintiff's products and secondly abusively tying two of its software products. The unique pricing and profit mode in the IM market gives rise to the difficulty in determining the scope of the relevant market. The features of the dynamically competitive industries have to be taken into account in evaluating the market power of the defendant. This article investigates the Chinese Court's most recent analytical approaches in defining the relevant market, evaluating dominance in a fast-growing sector particularly after the coming into force of the first AML judicial interpretation, and compares the approaches with the techniques employed in the practice of the European Commission (particularly the Microsoft/Skype case) and the case law of European Court of Justice.