Selected Legal Aspects of Protection of Undistorted Competition in the Digital Economy

Abstract

The article is of research and scientific nature, and its main purpose is to look at selected legal aspects of protection of undistorted competition in the digital economy. The key research question is whether the legal principles for the abuse of a dominant market position should be further developed by the competent competition authorities and courts on a case-by-case basis in regard to digital economy. Competition law’s purpose is to reduce market distortions. In this way, the digital economy must be safeguarded. Otherwise, due to capacity limits in advertising space or just having too much data, there is a possibility of exploitation abuse. The extent to which platform markets have this potential for legal misuse is highly impacted by market development dynamics and platform features (the extent of data access, the type of network effects). As a result, we begin by looking at whether merger control in online markets has been effective enough so far. Then, we discuss the dangers of market power abuse due to a lack of legal enforcement. The article concludes with a summary of the authors’ opinions based on the legal and economic grounds presented. The presented issue has not been analysed comprehensively in the literature on the subject so far, thus gives the opportunity to recommend avenues for future research.

Keywords

• market power abuse
• competition
• digital economy
• market development