Fair Trade Commission Introduces Google and Naver Market Dominance Abuse Cases to OECD... Digital Market Discussions

[Asia Economy Sejong=Reporter Dongwoo Lee] The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) will introduce cases of sanctions against Google, Naver, and others to OECD member countries and discuss current issues in the digital market.

The KFTC announced that it will submit reports on "Market Definition and Dominance Criteria in the Digital Market" and "Abuse of Superior Bargaining Position Using Purchasing Power" at the OECD Competition Committee regular meeting held from the 20th to the 24th, and introduce related content to the international community.

The Competition Committee, a policy committee under the OECD Secretariat, is an organization where delegations from competition authorities of 38 OECD member countries discuss international issues related to competition law and future tasks, holding regular meetings twice a year.

Regarding "Market Definition and Dominance Criteria in the Digital Market," the KFTC explained that unlike traditional industries, the digital market has ambiguous service boundaries and continuously emerging new services, making it difficult to define relevant markets or judge dominance using existing methods.

Accordingly, advanced competition authorities such as the EU, the United States, and Germany have introduced or are promoting measures to recognize dominance for platform operators above a certain scale regardless of market share, reflecting the characteristics of the digital market.

At this meeting, the KFTC plans to share cases where market dominance was judged using page views, number of users, etc., rather than sales revenue, in incidents where Google, Naver, and others abused market dominance, as well as cases where markets were defined based on innovation activities occurring during the development stage.

The KFTC will also introduce that it is preparing review guidelines containing specific judgment criteria to increase predictability for businesses in enforcing the Fair Trade Act in the digital market.

Furthermore, the OECD is expected to begin preparing recommendations to provide competition policy and law enforcement guidelines for the digital market at this meeting.

The KFTC explained that the recommendations will broadly include the characteristics of the digital market, analysis methods, types of anti-competitive conduct, merger review criteria, and domestic and international cooperation measures.

Meanwhile, the KFTC will also introduce the contents and enforcement cases of the Large-scale Distribution Business Act, which regulates abuse of superior bargaining position by large retailers imposing cost burdens on suppliers or unfairly returning goods, at the meeting.

Discussions will also cover provisional suspension orders issued for cases with significant illegality, competition law enforcement issues related to small personal transportation devices such as electric kickboards within regions, and post-merger reviews.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.