The digital economy has spread and developed rapidly. Thanks to this trend, individuals use search services on the Internet to obtain information and new products and services all over the world. Undertakings can easily access various markets at low costs and small and medium-sized undertakings can seize opportunities for their own growth.
However, when a platformer, using big data, provides services convenient for users free of charge, the users’ use of the platform tends to concentrate on such platformer, the result of which is that huge platformers will eventually appear in the market. Due to costs of changing accounts or technical difficulties therefor, users become fixed customers of such platformers. This may invite the possibility that a monopoly or an oligopoly emerges in the market. In addition, when a dominant platformer acquires start-ups with excellent technology, the platformer will strengthen its dominant power, by which the acquired start-ups may risk losing their own opportunities for new business development in the market. The consideration of these matters from the perspective of competition law policy has become essential now.
EU has introduced new legal systems into the international economic society, such as emission trading and the GDPR, and has aggressively applied EU rules, such as leniency and extraterritorial application of competition law, to date. This movement has stimulated the same movements in other jurisdictions. In this regard, the EU has a certain effective soft power in the legal world of edging the world economy along. In respect of competition law in the digital economy, in earlier times the EU applied EU competition law to the digital economy area and considered future policies therefor. While such consideration by the EU is being shared more or less with other jurisdictions, the EU may need to co-operate with other jurisdictions in relation to competition policy.
In this paper, the EU’s perspective on the digital economy and its relationship with EU competition law, major cases under EU competition law and the future direction in competition law policy will be considered in that order. Then, I focus on movements in Japan to analyze policy making for the digital economy, the position of the Japanese Antimonopoly Law in the digital economy, major cases in the Japan Fair Trade Commission, and, recent legislative movement in Japan. Finally, possible future issues between the EU and Japan are considered.
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