App stores, Apple, Digital competition, Digital economy, Digital markets, Digital Markets Act, European Commission, Fines, Proportionality, Unfair trading practices

(Leiden University)/ /Leave a comment

After almost three years since the Commission sent Apple its statement of objections, which was significantly trimmed down, the Commission reached a finding of abuse for which it imposed a whopping fine of 1.8 billion euros. Alongside this case, Apple was also involved in an almost identical case running parallel in the Netherlands, with similar…

Abuse of dominance, App stores, Apple, National competition authorities (NCAs), National court, Netherlands

(Leiden University)/ /Leave a comment

The Dutch case concerning the Apple App Store appears to make a (welcome) comeback. The case that started in 2019 came to a rather disappointing end in the summer of 2022 when the Dutch competition authority issued a public statement that gave the impression that it was satisfied with Apple’s adjustments to the App Store…

Abuse of dominance, Commitments, Effects-based, European Commission, European Union, Investigations, Market definition, Tying and Bundling, Unfair trading practices

(Leiden University)/ /Leave a comment

Factual background During the summer of 2020, news came out about a claim made by Slack against Microsoft for abusing its dominance by tying Teams to the Microsoft and Office 365 software packages. The claim at the time was that Microsoft had been forcing millions of users to install Teams and denied them the possibility…

Abuse of dominance, European Commission, Facebook, Platforms, Tying and Bundling

(Leiden University)/ /Leave a comment

Factual background Just before 2022 ended the Commission sent a statement of objections to Meta regarding the potential abusive behaviour of Facebook. According to the statement of objections, Facebook may be engaging in (i) abusive tying practices with regard to Facebook Marketplace as users (i.e. consumers) that log into Facebook and are automatically also offered…