Antitrust Enforcement Actions - January 2023

Federal Cartel Office of Germany ('Bundeskartellamt') had a busy January but it was Department of Justice, USA that grabbed the headlines for bringing a civil antitrust lawsuit against Google which seeks breaking up of Google's three primary assets which make up the Adtech industry.

Beginning in January, US Federal Trade Commission announced its proposal to ban employers from requiring their employees to sign non-compete agreements. Non-compete agreements are an unfair form of competition which violates Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, according to FTC's preliminary findings. FTC is currently seeking public comments till 20 March 2023

On similar lines, the Competition Bureau of Canada was also seen inviting comments on new guideline to address wage fixing and no-poaching agreement from interested parties.

Coming back to Germany, Bundeskartellamt had sent Statement of Objections to Google and an 'Association of Suppliers of Medical devices' for violation of German Competition Law.

As far as Google is concerned, Bundeskartellamt reached a preliminary conclusion that Google's terms & conditions do not give sufficient choice as to whether and to what extent the users agree to processing of their data across services. Bundeskartellamt found that Google combined a variety of data from various services such as Google Search, YouTube, Google Play, Google Maps and Google Assistant to create very detailed user profiles which it then exploited for advertising and other revenue generating purposes.

The second 'Statement of Objections' was sent to an 'Association of Suppliers of Medical Devices' which is under investigation for collectively demanding increase in the price of medical products and services?? from health insurance companies. The Association nearly represents 80 per cent of the suppliers of medical devices in Germany ????.

In addition, Bundeskartellamt also initiated an investigation against PayPal for possible abuse of dominant position???? in online payment market. Bundeskartellamt believes that the terms and conditions of PayPal restricts sellers from offering their goods and services at lower prices to consumers by limiting consumers ability to use a payment method that is cheaper than PayPal.

According to market studies??, PayPal holds a market leading position in online payment service and charges higher prices for online payment services. PayPal’s standard rate in ???? currently amounted to 2.49%-2.99% of the payment amount plus 34-39 cents per payment. The investigation against PayPal marks the first investigation against an online platform that is purely engaged in providing financial services.

Moving forward, on 17th January the Competition Commission of Hong Kong ???? published 'Model Non-Collusion clauses' to provide protection to public procurers from bid rigging. With this, procurers are bound to incorporate Model Non-Collusion clauses while inviting bids from the prospective bidder.

One of the clause of Model Non-Collusion clauses require bidders to disclose information on their beneficial ownership in the company participating in the tender. This will ensure that two bidders with common ownership does not reduce competitiveness of the procurement process.

Coming to Competition and Market Authority of UK (CMA), an open letter was published by CMA and Civil Aviation Authority (CAA)?reminding airport operators of their responsibilities and obligations under competition law. The open letter was published in response to CMA receiving intelligence from CAA which suggesting that UK airports might be sharing confidential information with competitors. The open letter to UK Airports reminds them of their legal obligations and consequences of breaking competition law.

Lastly, the Hellenic Competition Commission of Greece carried out dawn raid in the beer and alcoholic beverages sector after it received a complaint alleging violation of Article 102 of the Treaty for the Functioning of the European Union.

This is all for the month of January.

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See you next month!!