Antitrust Research Articles

Competition Law and Artificial Intelligence: Solution or Threat

This article discusses the solutions and threats posed by artificial intelligence in the context of business competition law. The findings of this article indicate that artificial intelligence presents both challenges and opportunities in this field. While artificial intelligence can enhance competition by increasing efficiency and fostering innovation, it raises concerns about market dominance and collusion. Consequently, the KPPU must adapt to these complexities to ensure fair competition and protect consumers. Balancing innovation with competitive enforcement is essential to leveraging the benefits of artificial intelligence while mitigating potential threats as artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent in the market. Based on these findings, the authors recommend that the KPPU increase its oversight of artificial intelligence-related activities to ensure compliance with business competition laws. The KPPU should look for evidence of anti-competitive behavior driven by artificial intelligence, such as price collusion through price monitoring and algorithmic matching software, by amending Law No. 5 of 1999. The KPPU enforces laws and regulations to address the impact of artificial intelligence on business competition law. For instance, the European Union’s Digital Markets Act empowers the European Commission to request algorithms, data about their testing, and explanations about their use from companies designated as competition gatekeepers.

When Monopsony Power Wanes

Abstract In this Part 2, Subjective Agency, I delve into the evolving power and agency of workers as structural conditions undergo transformation. Part 1 described how the law of competition propels firms towards centralisation, gradually diminishing the monopsony power wielded by global buyers in labour-intensive sectors. While manufacturers gain more power and significance, capable of undermining workers’ power, they also become susceptible to disruption. This section introduces the concept of Degree of Spatial Inflexibility (dsi). It posits that as a manufacturer’s monopoly power increases, the monopsony power in the supply chain decreases. However, this elevated monopoly power simultaneously establishes a higher dsi, amplifying the potential for worker disruption. It is essential to recognise that structural power shifts do not guarantee automatic benefits for workers; instead, they necessitate workers to capitalise on these vulnerabilities. This establishes a dialectical relationship between the evolving conditions of capital outlined in Part 1 and the subjective agency of workers, as detailed in Part 2 below.

Procurement Tender Fairness: MSME, Business Competition Law, and SIKaP Application

This study analyzes the right to justice in tenders for the procurement of goods and services for small business actors from the perspective of business competition law through the application of the SIKaP application. The research method used is qualitative analysis based on the available empirical analysis of the literature. The results of the literature analysis show that small business actors face challenges such as the non-transparency of the selection process, unfairness in evaluating proposals, non-neutral procurement, unfair competition, and constraints on access to information. SIKaP application is considered as a potential solution to increase fairness in procurement tenders, but challenges such as lack of understanding and awareness as well as technical obstacles still need to be overcome. The importance of the role of business competition law is also recognized in protecting the rights of small business actors. This study concludes that additional efforts are needed, including training and awareness, technological infrastructure improvements, and effective law enforcement, to ensure the successful implementation of the SIKaP application and the protection of small business actors' rights in procurement tenders. The results of this study make an important contribution in understanding the challenges and opportunities for small business actors in obtaining fairness in procurement tenders. The implications can be used as a basis for developing policies and actions that support fair participation and equal opportunities for small business actors.

Sustaınabılıty And Eu Competıtıon Law: Green Regulatıons

Environmental considerations in the enforcement of competition regulations have recently become one of the most controversial debate topics in the European Union after the adoption of the new Horizontal Guidelines. There are serious competition law concerns that are deemed to surface with the relaxation of the competition enforcement and any amendment of the enforcement of competition regulations shall be made with prudence. Environmental considerations in the enforcement of competition regulations shall be necessary to some extent for creating more room for particular sustainability agreements where there is no way of doing so by other means. The amendments made to the European Horizontal Guidelines show prudence while satisfying the need for environmental considerations for particular sustainability agreements, however some amendments shall be revised to relieve serious competition law concerns.

Designing (restorative) remedies for abuses of dominance by online platforms

Abstract The debate surrounding the application of European Union competition law to online platforms so far has predominantly focused on identifying anti-competitive practices. The design of corresponding remedies has been far less explored, although it is of equal importance to practice. In the absence of effective remedies, the mere identification of anti-competitive practices can do little to protect competition. Given the difficulties associated with identifying competition law infringements by online platforms, there is no reason to assume that the design of remedies intended to tackle the effects of such infringements will be straightforward. Therefore, this article aims to show the intricacies of designing effective remedies for Article 102 TFEU infringements by online platforms based on the case study of tying and bundling practices. In this process, the article clarifies the importance of incorporating restorative measures in competition law remedies that may require opting for structural interventions, which are difficult to impose under the scope of Regulation 1/2003. The article offers three potential options to overcome such difficulties within the ambit of this regulation, namely through the strategic use of interim measures, the introduction of flexible remedies, and the incorporation of the regulatory restraints of the Digital Markets Act.

Study on the Identification of Unfair Competition in the Acquisition of Business Data

In the era of the digital economy, competition among operators has expanded to include competition for business data, and Unfair competition cases have sprung up around the acquisition of business data by major internet operators. In current judicial practice, referees often cite existing provisions such as the “General provisions” and “Internet specific provisions” of the anti-unfair competition law to determine the illegality and legitimacy of commercial data Unfair competition. And in the determination of such acts, there are some problems, such as the conflict between “Rights and interests protection” and “Behavior legitimacy”, the definition of data rights and interests tends to protect the interests of operators, and the judgment of legality boundary of data acquisition behavior is fuzzy. Therefore, it is suggested to correct the way of identifying the commercial data acquisition behavior, return to the nature of competition, and establish the behavior regulation paradigm. Changing the division of data ownership, confirming the portability of personal data, expanding the reasonable limit of data portability while playing the function of public-private synergy. To refine the judgment standard of justifiability of behavior, it is necessary to establish the behavior paradigm of “Reasonable legal interest test”, and to explore the rules of fact identification and cognizance of Data Acquisition Technology, in order to achieve the existing rules under the commercial data acquisition pattern of behavior identification optimization.

Determination of Fares for Online Transportation Applications with A Fare Bargaining System is Linked to Business Competition Law in Indonesia

This research examines the pricing mechanism in online transportation applications in Indonesia, focusing on the bargaining system and its implications for business competition law. Pricing in online transportation applications often causes polemics in the community because it is considered non-transparent and unfair. This study aims to analyze how the pricing mechanism is carried out by online transportation application providers, as well as evaluate its conformity with the principles of business competition law in Indonesia. The research method used is normative juridical, with a legislative and conceptual approach. Data was obtained through literature studies and analysis of documents related to government regulations and policies in the field of online transportation. The results of the study show that the pricing mechanism by online transportation applications still faces various challenges, especially related to transparency and compliance with business competition laws. In addition, the bargaining system implemented by several applications still causes price uncertainty for consumers. This study concludes that there needs to be stricter regulation and stricter supervision of the pricing mechanism in online transportation applications. This is important to ensure that business competition runs in a healthy and fair manner, as well as to protect the interests of consumers.

Protection of intellectual property rights against unfair trade practices in the European Union

It is indicated that each state must ensure fair competition in its market in order to support economic growth. This provision is also relevant for the European Union, within which the primary importance is to ensure free competition for the further development of a single system of circulation of goods, works and services, promotion of innovation and creativity, job creation and increased competitiveness, as all this is necessary for the EU to compete in global economy. This article provides a general analysis of the correlation and interaction between the provisions of intellectual property law and the provisions of competition law in the European Union (EU). In particular, the author examines the peculiarities of legal regulation of economic competition and intellectual property protection at the EU level, the state of compliance with EU competition law in the process of exercising and protecting intellectual property rights, and the role of court decisions in determining the balance between intellectual property protection and competition law requirements. The author emphasises that despite different objectives, competition law and intellectual property law have a common basis and therefore actively interact, i.e. these two systems are synergistic. The author analyses possible options for the relationship between protection against unfair competition and intellectual property laws, including the means that would reduce the often existing «tension» between them. Due to the need for a common regulatory framework to ensure that laws are in line with dynamic trade practices, the EU’s unfair competition laws are mostly flexible and general in nature. The author identifies the measures currently being taken by the EU to optimise the rules in this area. The author concludes that intellectual property protection, as well as effective antitrust regulation, are the most important legal mechanisms created to ensure economic growth based on the development and expanded use of innovations. The author also examines the measures currently being taken by the EU to optimize the rules in this area. It is concluded that the general trend of further development and improvement of interaction between antitrust and intellectual property legislation in the EU should be, first of all, overcoming regulatory and institutional dispersion.

Equality DanceSport doing transgender inclusivity in the United Kingdom: Cultural cisgenderism and transgender experiences

In this article, cultural cisgenderism is adopted to investigate Equality DanceSport, a sporting context emerging out of an LGBT+ community. 1 The study questions the extent to which Equality DanceSport enforces regulations and practices which promote trans-inclusivity. Drawing on a constructivist grounded theory approach, I conducted autoethnography and 35 semi-structured interviews with LGBT+ dancers representing diverse genders and sexualities. I examined the discourses shaping the recent revision of Equality DanceSport competition rules in the United Kingdom and the experiences of transgender dancers in the competitive arena. Findings suggest that despite challenging some cis and heteronormative practices in mainstream DanceSport spaces, essentialist notions of sex and gender continue to feed into the shaping of Equality DanceSport's competition rules. These notions are hinged on debates around fairness and inclusivity and inform the constitution of a binary sex category in the competition rules. Transgender dancers face several challenges within the binary sex system, tending to cope through identity compromise. Such a strategy contributes to transgender erasure and invisibility. Overall, this paper provides a critical understanding of trans-inclusivity in an LGBT+ sporting space in the United Kingdom. It highlights the complexity of achieving inclusivity and calls for a critical interrogation which does not conflate LGB with the T when investigating the inclusivity of LGBT+ sporting contexts. The paper concludes with a proposal for radical regulatory and policy changes that question the epistemological understandings of sex and gender and celebrate other values in competitive sports which de-emphasise the focus on winning.

‘Actions’ or ‘Activities’? To the Problem of Legal Facts of Competition Law

‘Actions’ or ‘Activities’? To the Problem of Legal Facts of Competition Law

A fair share of sustainability benefits for consumers: the Horizontal Guidelines in the silent spring

ABSTRACT The revised Horizontal Guidelines provide a new framework to assess sustainability agreements. This article explores two pivotal aspects in the Horizontal Guidelines: individual non-use value benefits and collective benefits. By portraying sustainability as an economic rather than a moral benefit, the analysis delves into the foundations and methodologies used in these benefits and their fit into the existing caselaw, exposing shortfalls and controversies in their application. Building on this discussion, the article further explores the legitimacy of competition authorities to exercise distributional functions and decide on consumer preferences. The article overcomes the notion of sustainability as a non-economic goal in competition law, reveals key challenges in the future application of the Guidelines and aligns the economic discussion with the legal reality.

Competition concerns with foundation models: a new feast for big tech?

ABSTRACT The paper explores how Generative AI intersects with Competition Law, focusing on Foundation Models (FMs) and Large Language Models (LLMs). It examines industry dynamics and identifies key competition issues like entry barriers, tying, leveraging, and acquisitions. It highlights the supply chain's importance and looks at how FMs are integrated into search software, chatbots, and productivity tools, particularly noting entry barriers such as computing power and data collection. It suggests that FMs might require new approaches to market delineation, possibly creating a separate relevant market for data. The paper also discusses various cases pertaining to tying and leveraging and highlights the difficulty in proving tying due to the blurred lines between traditional search engines and AI chatbots. It illustrates how competition assessments for acquisitions may require changes due to data being a highly flexible commodity for the industry. The paper concludes by calling for increased scrutiny and regulation for the industry.

Overlooking digital collusion risks in the EU's agenda for a single European data space(s)

ABSTRACT The EU aims to drive the data and platform economy by establishing a single European Data Space(s) vision, envisioning it as a catalyst for innovation, novel services, enhanced competition and consumer welfare. It involves implementing existing and forthcoming horizontal and sectorial data-sharing laws to overcome technical, legal, and ethical barriers to (personal and non-personal) data access and achieve specific data-driven policy targets. The initial spaces will cover nine economic sectors, few established and others in development. The study assesses the possible oversight of competition law collusion concerns in these initiatives, using the example of the EU Mobility Data Space (EMDS). By employing competition law qualitative doctrinal methods, it emphasizes the risks of digital collusion within these EU-wide open data frameworks, and it indicates that they could severely harm one or several parameters of competition. It concludes by offering policy recommendations to prevent or minimize collusion risks for the EMDS and suggests further research in other sectors.

Antitrust restriction on football governance: the case of European Super League

ABSTRACT The European Super League case has been widely discussed by EU regulators, football associations, clubs, players, supporters and legal practitioners. This article intends to explore the legal reasoning of the Court of Justice regarding the intervention of EU competition law in football governance in this case. This article accordingly analyses the interpretation of the rules and exemptions stipulated in Articles 101 (1) and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and gives comments on the antitrust assessment by the Court of Justice regarding the common rules of prior approval and sanctions. It follows that the Court of Justice stressed the importance of transparent, objective and non-discriminatory procedures in the rule-making of football associations and saw this as a significant condition for the enforcement of EU competition law and antitrust exemption.

Emergence of biconnected clusters in explosive percolation.

By introducing a simple competition mechanism for bond insertion in random graphs, explosive percolation exhibits a sharp phase transition with rich critical phenomena. We investigate high-order connectivity in explosive percolation using an event-based ensemble, focusing on biconnected clusters, where any two sites are connected by at least two independent paths. Our numerical analysis confirms that explosive percolation with different intracluster bond competition rules shares the same percolation threshold and universality, with biconnected clusters percolating simultaneously with simply connected clusters. However, the volume fractal dimension d_{f}^{'} of biconnected clusters varies depending on the competition rules of intracluster bonds. The size distribution of biconnected clusters exhibits double-scaling behavior: large clusters follow the standard Fisher exponent derived from the hyperscaling relation τ^{'}=1+1/d_{f}^{'}, while small clusters display a modified Fisher exponent τ_{0}<τ^{'}. These findings provide insights into the intricate nature of connectivity in explosive percolation.

An Empirical Study on the Judicial Regulation of Unfair Competition in Data Scraping Behavior

Currently, China's data-related legislation is still in the initial stage of gradual exploration. Due to the unfair competition disputes involving data capture with a variety of data types, complex technical means, capture behavior hidden and other characteristics, resulting in the judge in the trial of data capture cases mostly choose to apply the general provisions of the “Anti-Unfair Competition Law”, that is, the second article to be adjudicated, which makes the data capture behavior of the cases arising from the dispute is more and more, the data capture behavior whether it constitutes unfair competition, This has led to an increasing number of cases and disputes arising from data-scraping behavior. Therefore, this paper takes the data capture behavior as the research object, takes some typical cases as examples, discusses the adjudication results and thoughts of the cases, and in the process, finds that in the judicial practice of such dispute cases, there exists the difference of the applicable law, the judgment standard of the legitimacy of the data capture behavior is not clear, and the understanding of the damages caused by the unfair competition behavior of the data capture is not the same, and other problems. In view of this, in judicial practice, Article 2 and Article 12 should be clearly applied, and importance should be attached to the criteria for judging the legitimacy of data capture; finally, through the theory of balance of interests and the principle of proportionality, the interests of data platforms, consumer interests and public interests of the society involved in data capture should be taken into consideration, thus realizing the balance of interests of multiple parties, and achieving the balance between data protection and data flow through dynamic justice.

How does a fair competitive environment facilitate the growth of private enterprises: A quasi-natural experiment based on the antimonopoly law

This study examines the impact of the Chinese antimonopoly law on the growth of private enterprises, addressing the broader economic context where fair competition is essential for fostering private sector expansion. Employing a difference-in-differences (DID) methodology and analyzing data from 2006 to 2019, this study reveals that the enforcement of the law has enhanced the growth of private firms primarily by reducing financial constraints and increasing the financing costs for highly monopolistic corporations. The results suggest that stringent enforcement of the antimonopoly law will significantly alleviate financial difficulties and stimulate the growth of private firms, thereby achieving high-quality economic development.

In Re Rohit Arora v. Zomato (P.) Ltd. (CCI Case No. 54 of 2020)

Competition law which is also known as ‘Anti-Trust’ law is comparatively a new set of legislation. It enables corporate laws across the globe and endeavour to protect the interest of consumers as well as small business class and traders. The Competition Act, 2002 [hereafter referred as ‘the Act’] upholds the spirit of Indian Constitution. The Constitution of India under Part IV, Article 39(c) says that the State has to make such an economic policy and principle that the process of the economic system may not yield into concentration of assets as well as means of production to the handful capitalist or industrialist causing common detriment to nation and its economy.

Market competition and firm behavior: A comprehensive study on the impact of antimonopoly law

This study examines the impact of the antimonopoly law on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in China by analyzing the diverse effects on different types of enterprises and employee groups. The implementation of the law aimed to foster a fairer competitive market by dismantling monopolistic forces, particularly in their wage decisions. Utilizing a difference-in-differences (DID) approach, we find that the law significantly promotes CSR, especially in labor-intensive enterprises, which show a greater commitment to social responsibility compared with technology-intensive firms. The positive effect on ordinary employees’ wages is more pronounced than on managerial staff, highlighting increased wage fairness and transparency. These findings contribute to the understanding of how regulatory frameworks shape corporate behavior and social responsibility.

Transparency Unveiled: Access to Information in Digital Markets Act Proceedings at Member State Level – The German and Austrian Experience

Access to information is essential in order to guarantee fundamental procedural rights under EU law – in particular in order to make full use of the right of defence. At the same time, access to information ensures the greatest possible transparency for all parties and stakeholders. As another key point, access to information is also crucial in order to strengthen private enforcement, which is the second essential pillar of the effective enforcement of EU law in competition law. This article outlines the options provided for accessing information in the context of the new DMA in selected Member States, namely Austria and Germany. This article is part 2 on the issue of ‘Transparency Unveiled: Access to Information in Digital Markets Act Proceedings’.