House Judiciary Committee calls for stricter antitrust rules for technology giants

 By Emmanuel Legrand 

The Committee​ on the ​Judiciary ​of the US House of Representatives has called for tech companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook to be subject to stronger enforcement of antitrust rules and to greater oversight to ensure a fair market. A new report urges Congress to “consider legislation that draws on two mainstay tools of the antimonopoly toolkit: structural separation and line of business restrictions.” 

  "To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy, underdog start-ups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons," read the report. The report offers remedies to (1) restore competition in the digital economy, (2) strengthen the antitrust laws, and (3) reinvigorate antitrust enforcement, according to a statement from the Judiciary Committee. 

A roadmap for competition

  "As they exist today, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook each possess significant market power over large swaths of our economy. In recent years, each company has expanded and exploited their power of the marketplace in anti-competitive ways," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (NY-10) and Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) in a joint statement. "Our investigation leaves no doubt that there is a clear and compelling need for Congress and the antitrust enforcement agencies to take action that restores competition, improves innovation, and safeguards our democracy. This Report outlines a roadmap for achieving that goal."

  The 449-page report outlined antitrust issues related to tech companies and followed an 18-month investigation by the committee into the practices of tech giants, which included dozens of contributions from antitrust experts  testimonies from the chief executives of Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg), Apple (Tim Cook), Amazon (Jeff Bezos) and Alphabet (Sundar Pichai), among others.

 The committee's recommendations include:      

  > Structural separations to prohibit platforms from operating in lines of business that depend on or interoperate with the platform;    
  > Prohibiting platforms from engaging in self-preferencing;
  > Requiring platforms to make its services compatible with competing networks to allow for interoperability and data portability;
  > Mandating that platforms provide due process before taking action against market participants;
  > Establishing a standard to proscribe strategic acquisitions that reduce competition;
  > Improvements to the Clayton Act, the Sherman Act, and the Federal Trade Commission Act, to bring these laws into line with the challenges of the digital economy;
  > Eliminating anticompetitive forced arbitration clauses;
  > Strengthening the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice;
  > And promoting greater transparency and democratisation of the antitrust agencies.

 

The report outlined mostly the vision of Democrats who lead the House, and do not necessarily cover the whole political spectrum as Republicans sitting on the committee such as Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) have issued their own conclusions to the investigation.

 

 

> In an interview with Managing IP, the head of the Department of Justice antitrust division Makan Delrahim announced that he would "likely" step down after the US elections, regardless of the result. “My plans have been to leave at the end of this president's first term. Regardless of the outcome of the election, I anticipate that there will be someone else in my seat in the next year," said Delrahim, who will be remembered in the music sector as the one who opened the door to a review of the consent decrees ruling rights societies ASCAP and BMI since 1941.