DIGITAL ECONOMY & COMPETITION LAW: A CONUNDRUM

Best Citation – Padmavathy Nehru, DIGITAL ECONOMY & COMPETITION LAW: A CONUNDRUM, 2 IJLR 22, 2022

ABSTRACT

The internet realm has grown exponentially over the years and with the advent of digitalization, the increasing audience to the digital economy has resulted in the outburst growth of this sector. As the internet grows, web-based businesses are increasingly becoming the subject matter of competition concerns given the emergence and growth of large internet companies such as Google, Yahoo!, eBay, MySpace etc which have assumed a dominant position in the search engine market, social networking market and e-commerce market. Since this sector is evolving quickly, its contours are beginning to take shape and several globally dominant firms now play significant roles. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has been facing a number of complaints against e-commerce retailers for abusing their dominant position. Major concerns relating to exclusive supply/distribution agreements and predatory pricing have arisen before CCI. Therefore, there is a growing need for competition authorities and courts to exercise greater care in balancing the protection of consumers from anticompetitive behavior and harm caused from interfering in complex businesses. The concept of ‘Competition Issues in the Digital Economy in India’ and its shortcomings with respect to the existing framework has been widely debated and discussed in the past. The existing literature has been analyzed to understand the value addition that can be added through this paper. Although the challenges of the present e-commerce sector have been well established in the multiple studies conducted, the present paper builds on the existing literature by focusing on the contemporary CCI decisions, the ‘CCI Market Study on E-commerce’ 2020 that have potentially shaped the competition law jurisprudence & posing alternative recommendations to deal with the legislative shortcomings.

Keywords – E-commerce, Competition, Digital Economy, Competition Commission of India