(Source: "Digital Rule of w88 slot" 2025-04-26)

Editor’s note:On the occasion of the National Intellectual Property Publicity Week in 2025, the "Digital Rule of w88 slot" journal closely follows the theme of this event - "Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence". With the support and guidance of the Third Civil Trial Division of the Supreme People's Court and the Intellectual Property Court, it focuses on the latest theoretical research results and practical developments of intellectual property in the digital era, and launches a set of forward-looking, original and practical academic articles, hoping to serve the development of new productivity.

Legal regulations on platform monopoly

Moderator: Zhou Xiang (Member of the Party Committee and Vice President of the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People's Court)

Interlocutor: Huang Yong (Director of the Competition Law Center of the w88 casino, professor of the Law w88 casino, member of the Expert Advisory Group of the Anti-Monopoly and Anti-Unfair Competition Committee of the State Council, researcher of the Intellectual Property Judicial Protection Research Center of the Supreme People's Court), Sun Jin (Professor of Wuhan University Law w88 casino, Director of Competition Law and Policy Research Center, Executive Vice President of Network Governance Research Institute), Liu Shuangyu (Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and President of Beijing Intellectual Property Court), Zhu Dan (Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and President of the People's Court of Pudong New District, Shanghai)

01

Zhou Xiang:Compared with the traditional economy, the digital economy has the characteristics of high dependence on technology (algorithms), two-sided (multi-sided) markets, network effects, scale effects, and low marginal costs. It can easily lead to types of monopolistic behaviors such as restrictions on data interoperability and algorithm collusion, posing new challenges to antitrust legal governance. For its governance, should we follow the traditional anti-monopoly w88 slot public regulation path, or do we need a new perspective and plan?

Huang Yong:The digital economy, a business model that combines multi-sided platforms, algorithms, and data, requires legal analysis to have more levels and complexity. Digital platforms often serve multiple stakeholders at the same time. For example, e-commerce platforms connect consumers, merchants, logistics companies and other parties to form complex market relationships, which requires detailed disassembly and analysis in individual cases. At the same time, the network effect and scale effect of the digital economy pose challenges to the quantitative analysis of economics. For digital platforms, the larger the user base, the higher the value and attractiveness of the platform. The network effect leads to the rapid expansion of the market share of leading enterprises; the copy cost of digital products and services is extremely low. As the scale expands, their marginal costs are close to zero, thus helping enterprises to rapidly expand their scale and market concentration is increasing. This may lead to the need for economic analysis to develop corresponding quantitative indicators to better quantitatively explain whether the business behavior of large-scale digital platforms excludes and limits market competition; whether and to what extent it improves efficiency and promotes innovation; and whether it harms consumer interests.

In 2022, my country’s Anti-Monopoly w88 slot completed its first revision after nearly 14 years of implementation. The key points and highlights of this revision are very prominent, and the content related to the digital economy deserves attention. During the revision process of the Anti-Monopoly w88 slot, the legislative body extensively solicited public opinions, many of which expressed the need to adjust the framework of the w88 slot, including the inclusion of a special chapter on the digital economy. Finally, Article 9 of the revised Anti-Monopoly w88 slot stipulates that operators shall not use data and algorithms, technology, capital advantages, platform rules, etc. to engage in monopolistic behavior prohibited by this w88 slot. It highlights the characteristics of monopolistic behavior in the digital economy in general and in principle, and is a summary of experience. However, the framework does not include a special chapter on the digital economy, indicating that the existing institutional framework can cope with the challenges brought by the digital economy.

Whether it is the revision of the Anti-Monopoly w88 slot, the issuance and update of its judicial interpretations, departmental regulations, supporting guidelines, or even administrative w88 slot enforcement practice and judicial practice, they all reflect the process of mutually reinforcing development between the Anti-Monopoly w88 slot and the digital economy. Before the revision of the "Anti-Monopoly w88 slot", the "Anti-Monopoly Guidelines of the State Council Anti-Monopoly Committee on the Platform Economy" (hereinafter referred to as the "Anti-Monopoly Guidelines") were issued in February 2021. w88 slot enforcement agencies have made anti-monopoly penalty decisions on platform companies such as Alibaba and Meituan, and courts have also made civil rulings on monopoly lawsuits in the digital economy such as JD.com v. Ali, indicating that the anti-monopoly w88 slot's public regulation path has the flexibility to solve new problems, be applicable to new fields, and can cope with new challenges in the new era.

Huang Yong:Looking abroad, the antitrust legislation, w88 slot enforcement and judicial practices of the United States and the European Union deserve our attention. The most important thing is to gain insight into their underlying logic. The United States has long applied consumer welfare standards, emphasized market self-regulation, and paid attention to price and market efficiency. In recent years, the United States has also made some innovative attempts. For example, in 2020, the FTC sued Facebook, requiring it to divest apps such as Instagram and WhatsApp, showing its emphasis on non-price factors (such as data and privacy). For another example, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Google, emphasizing the competition issues of its exclusive agreement and data accumulation. It was actually focusing on the long-term damage to the market competition pattern. Overall, U.S. antitrust regulations still tend to be based on the principles of economic benefits and market dominance, with less active involvement in the technical details of enterprises. The EU places more emphasis on proactive intervention and preventive regulation. The EU's "Digital Markets Act" clearly proposes special regulatory measures for "gatekeeper" platforms, such as data interoperability and portability, restrictions on platform exclusivity arrangements, etc., going beyond the "post-facto intervention" model of traditional antitrust enforcement. We must combine our country's market conditions, industry characteristics, and legal systems, and maintain reflection on international experience such as the United States and Europe. The U.S. digital economy has reached a certain scale both in terms of volume and technology, while Europe has yet to cultivate locally competitive digital companies with global competitiveness. This has also affected its antitrust w88 slot enforcement practices to a certain extent, reflecting the interactive process of market development and w88 slot enforcement practices.

Now, the digital economy has officially entered the "digital intelligence era" from the "digital platform stage". Some large artificial intelligence models are more versatile, making the cross-border competition attribute of digital intelligence more prominent, thus bringing more complexity to the application of the w88 slot. The problems and disputes caused by some enterprises adopting open source business models require our careful and detailed analysis and treatment. My thinking on this is that Article 4 of the revised Anti-Monopoly w88 slot has added the statement that "the state adheres to the principles of marketization and rule of w88 slot and strengthens the basic position of competition policy", which establishes basic principles for the application of the Anti-Monopoly w88 slot in the field of digital economy: The Anti-Monopoly w88 slot, as the "economic constitution", should have the overall principle of "respecting the market and giving priority to competition". Furthermore, the application of anti-monopoly rules must comply with the basic laws of market competition and innovation.

02

Zhou Xiang: The digital economy has not only created the legal system demand for digital property empowerment, but also raised legal regulatory issues on the competitive order of the digital market (including antitrust supervision of the digital economy). How do you view the relationship between the two?

Huang Yong: In the field of digital economy, due to the importance of data to digital market competition, the relationship between data protection and antitrust has long been a hot and controversial issue. Generally speaking, an operator's holding of massive data based on the characteristics of its products and services and its business model is not a "monopoly" in itself, but its use of such data may cause monopoly issues. For example, exclusive control or exploitative use of data may raise antitrust enforcement concerns.

As an act of empowerment and confirmation of rights, digital property empowerment usually does not cause new competition issues. The core of digital property empowerment (such as data rights protection and virtual asset rights confirmation) is to clarify the boundaries of rights, define the use, transaction and income rules of digital resources through w88 slot, and avoid the "tragedy of the commons" caused by unclear ownership (such as disorderly data crawling, "free riding", etc.). In other words, if there is no relatively clear digital property empowerment, the competitive order in the data market will be relatively disordered. Therefore, digital property empowerment is conducive to curbing unfair competition involving data and protecting the normal order of competition, which is the same as digital market competition regulation.

The key to w88 slot enforcement involving data monopoly behavior is to examine whether data usage excludes or restricts market competition, and digital property empowerment may become a consideration in individual cases. For example, in the EU case of punishing Google shopping comparison services, the focus of the w88 slot enforcement penalty was the abuse of "taking advantage of data to favor its own services", and data and its rights and interests were presented as tool elements for implementing monopolistic behavior. Similar situations also apply to data-related behaviors such as tying data products and using algorithms to implement discriminatory pricing or high prices. There is another type of behavior that has attracted attention because w88 slot enforcement agencies regard data as a key input in the sense of competition w88 slot, such as data blocking, refusal to open, etc.

In some cases, data protection laws and antitrust laws may conflict. A typical case is the case in which the German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) punished Meta (formerly Facebook) for data abuse. The focus of this case is whether Meta’s behavior of integrating user data and providing related services without obtaining valid user consent constitutes an exploitative and abusive monopoly behavior. Judging from the case itself, the act of implementing data fusion without obtaining valid user consent clearly constitutes a violation of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Therefore, there is a certain degree of competition between the GDPR and the German Anti-Restriction of Competition Act in terms of legal application. In determining that the conduct constituted abuse and thus violated the German Anti-Restriction of Competition Act, the FCO took into account its simultaneous violation of the GDPR. The determination of the application of this w88 slot was also confirmed by the Court of Justice of the European Union in subsequent proceedings.

The ownership nature of data elements is still subject to considerable debate in the legal field. Some scholars advocate that data behavior can be directly regulated, especially that data in the public domain should not be stipulated to contain any rights; some scholars believe that data should be protected with reference to commercial secrets; and some scholars advocate that data has mixed attributes, and tort w88 slot, contract w88 slot, and competition w88 slot should be applied at the same time. Although the nature of data rights has not yet been determined, there is no need to find a new way to deal with data elements in the enforcement of individual antitrust cases. That is, in the process of judging the illegality of behavior based on the basic standards of antitrust w88 slot, the issue of data ownership can be taken into consideration based on the circumstances of the individual case. On the one hand, platform companies attract a large number of users to obtain data by developing high-quality products or services. On this basis, they can analyze, process, and utilize data. In this process, companies obtain data benefits through various investments, thus making data rights possess the characteristics of property rights. This is also the main reason for the need for a legal system for data property empowerment. On the other hand, due to the characteristics of their products and services, some platform companies may indeed obtain relatively more data, even massive amounts of data, and the use of data by these platform companies may be of concern to competition w88 slot enforcement. This is a global topic and an area where cases often have an international character. The property empowerment of data, or in other words, if the ownership of data is clear, what impact it will have on antitrust w88 slot enforcement involving data still needs to be confirmed by practical development. The complexity of the problem determines the complexity of this process. For example, is requiring platform companies to share data a feasible solution at this stage? Will it possibly conflict with the property empowerment of data in the future? From the perspective of antitrust w88 slot enforcement, are there any special concerns about the behavior of platform companies in obtaining, analyzing, and using data? Is it empirically sufficient to summarize typical behaviors? If so, will the judgment of the illegality of these types of behaviors be affected by the property empowerment of data? What is the enforcement boundary of antitrust enforcement for data behavior? Is there any special weight to be given to competition impact, innovation, and efficiency factors in individual case enforcement? What is the significance and role of data property empowerment in this judgment? These are all things we need to study and discuss in theory and practice.

In any case, any w88 slot enforcement respects and recognizes legitimate rights and interests. Under this premise, antitrust w88 slot enforcement uses the elimination and restriction of competition as the legal standard for judging the illegality of corporate actions. Innovation, efficiency and other factors must also be considered. Correspondence between rights and responsibilities is the most basic legal principle, which clarifies the data rights and interests of platform companies, and platform companies must assume corresponding obligations such as protecting data security. From this perspective, data property empowerment is also conducive to coordinating the relationship between data security and other systems and the antitrust system. It can be said to be the basis for building a complete and effective data legal system. Therefore, in the process of determining whether data-related behavior constitutes a monopoly, antitrust w88 slot enforcement should fully respect the data rights and interests of enterprises, consider data ownership factors based on individual case circumstances, gain insight into industry practices regarding data processing formed under the market mechanism, and make reasonable judgments on the competitive effects of the behavior.

In short, digital property empowerment is essentially a legal upgrade of the market competition order, rather than a subversive challenge. Anti-unfair competition w88 slot, anti-monopoly w88 slot and other competition w88 slot rules only need to be refined under the existing logic, and there is no need to reconstruct the institutional paradigm.

03

Zhou Xiang: From a monopoly perspective, how to follow the laws of digital society and platform operation logic to clarify the legitimacy and limits of platform bans such as restricting the use of technical means and prohibiting directing traffic to other platform operators or specific users within the platform?

Huang Yong:The essence of platform banning behavior is how the platform reasonably uses the "traffic distribution power". Relying on its data, algorithms, intra-platform rules, platform access rules, etc., the platform may implement behaviors such as refusal of transactions, differential treatment, and monopoly agreements within the meaning of antitrust w88 slot. At present, platforms have not essentially formed a form of competition that is sufficient to subvert the framework of the competition legal system, and platform bans can still be regulated within the existing antitrust w88 slot framework.

There are generally two types of platform bans: one is inter-platform ban, that is, the platform prohibits its own users from diverting traffic to competing platforms through intra-platform links or QR codes to prevent user outflow, such as early WeChat bans on Taobao links, Facebook restricts external links, etc.; the other is intra-platform ban, that is, the platform imposes selective restrictions on settled operators, for example, reducing the exposure of competitors' products or services in rankings and search results (such as self-preferential treatment in the Google search case).

Platform bans may cause harm in the following three aspects: First, the exclusionary anti-competitive effect, which prevents competing platforms or other operators from obtaining market opportunities and raises the costs of other operators. Second, there is the self-preferential effect, where the platform favors its own or related services, putting competitors in a state of unfair competition. Third, the damage to consumer welfare, that is, users are forced to stay in a single platform ecosystem, reducing freedom of choice, may reduce platform innovation motivation and innovation level in the long term.

Judging from the legislation and w88 slot enforcement practices of the United States and Europe, platform bans are not necessarily illegal. The United States adopts a more case-by-case approach. For example, in the case of Epic Games v. Apple, the court reviewed Apple's App Store's ban on third-party payment links and determined that Apple's implementation of this restriction had the effect of promoting efficiency. On the one hand, this restriction allows the Apple system to have better device security performance and privacy protection, thereby ensuring differentiation from the Android system and enhancing its appeal to consumers; on the other hand, the court partially recognized that Apple’s investment in intellectual property rights should be compensated. Ultimately, Apple won the case. The EU adopts the idea of ​​"ex-ante regulation". When a platform has the status of "gatekeeper", it carries out ex-ante regulation similar to "inherently illegal", but its standard for determining "gatekeeper" is more stringent than the standard for determining dominance. In other words, normal business competition between competitors is generally not subject to interference. Only when a platform is large enough to not be restricted by any market competition factors, it should be subject to prior industry regulations.

Platform bans may often trigger w88 slot enforcement attention under the abuse of dominant market position clause. Such cases require a comprehensive judgment of illegality based on factors such as the relevant market, dominant position, anti-competitive effects of the behavior, and reasonable defense grounds. For platforms, the implementation of bans may have a series of rationalities: first, to maintain the integrity of the ecosystem, that is, to protect the ecosystem it has established, and to prevent malicious diversion of "free-riding" behavior that leads to user loss and ecological collapse. The second is to protect data security and personal privacy, that is, to prevent privacy leaks or data security risks from external links. The third is the protection of intellectual property rights or commercial interests, that is, based on the protection of one's own brand, goodwill, and intellectual property rights, the links of competitors or illegal users are blocked within a reasonable range.

Applying antitrust laws to regulate platform bans, according to legal provisions, the relevant market needs to be used as the dimension of competition analysis. Individual cases may involve various factors such as the overall competitive environment of the market, platform interests, user interests, consumer interests, and information compliance. If a ban seriously damages competitors' market entry opportunities or innovation space and reduces the vitality of market competition in the long term, it may constitute monopolistic behavior that should be prohibited by w88 slot. In the process of making such judgments, it is usually necessary to also consider the possibility that the blocking behavior helps maintain data security, improve user experience, and does not cause obvious competitive harm.

It needs to be emphasized that the platform’s rules and practices regarding bans should also pay attention to strengthening relevant compliance construction. For example, banning standards and procedures must be open and transparent to ensure that bans are not arbitrary; unless there are legal and legitimate reasons, no differential treatment shall be applied to specific operators; banning measures must be proportional to the realization of legitimate purposes and must not exceed the necessary limits required to protect legitimate interests. This is also a factor that w88 slot enforcement and justice usually need to consider when measuring the boundaries of legitimacy of platform bans.

04

Zhou Xiang: In recent years, the behavior of platform companies with market dominance in acquiring start-ups has attracted attention. Such mergers and acquisitions that may inhibit future market dynamic competition and innovation vitality are called "killing mergers and acquisitions." Some people believe that such behavior should be subject to antitrust legal regulations. So, how to regulate the "killing mergers and acquisitions" of start-ups by super platforms that may have anti-competitive effects?

Huang Yong:Whether it is the EU's "Digital Market Act" or the new merger review guidelines led by the "New Brandeis" in the United States, the wording "killing mergers" is not used. The word itself seems to express a negative attitude towards such mergers and acquisitions. In practice, it is easy to cause misunderstandings of "inherently illegal" and "presumption of guilt", and is contrary to the general ideas and principles of anti-monopoly regulations on concentration of business operators in various countries. To put it simply, antitrust regulations on concentration of undertakings still use competition impact as the basic criterion for judgment, which is related to the concerns of this type of mergers and acquisitions, especially the consideration of the impact on innovation. The expression "strangling mergers and acquisitions" focuses on reflecting the characteristics of the two parties in terms of scale and development stage, and there is no inevitable logical relationship between the two.

The so-called "strangling M&A" is a type of transaction that summarizes the acquisition of start-up platform companies by leading platform companies. From the perspective of dynamic competition and innovation, the competitive assessment of digital mergers and acquisitions by super platforms is very complex. On the one hand, "killing mergers and acquisitions" may help super platforms directly eliminate potential competitors; on the other hand, "killing mergers and acquisitions" encourage more entrepreneurs to carry out continuous entrepreneurship, that is, after establishing a complete set of digital business logic, they then pursue acquisitions as soon as possible and start the next business. The market incubation work is completed by the head platform, and the cycle starts over and over again. As a result, the attraction of monetization will encourage more entrepreneurs to invest in digital economic innovation.

The reason why "strangling mergers" attract w88 slot enforcement attention has its own internal logic. For example, w88 slot enforcement agencies' focus on "killer mergers" in the pharmaceutical field is closely related to the extremely high market entry barriers brought about by regulatory policies in the pharmaceutical industry. As we all know, the market access review of drugs is strict, the uses of specific drugs are limited, and the time cycle of drug research and development is very long, and technology and capital investment are high. These characteristics together lead to the relatively specific and limited number of emerging competitors faced by original drug companies. Therefore, "strangling mergers and acquisitions" can enable original drug companies to eliminate external competition and maintain the price of their own products. This strategy is profitable. We can see that the w88 slot enforcement agencies of the United States and the European Union are not only concerned about the "killing mergers" problem in the pharmaceutical industry, but also the reverse payment problem in the industry. The two problems are essentially the same. However, the same strategy does not necessarily apply outside of the pharmaceutical industry.

The market characteristics of the digital economy are very different from those of the pharmaceutical industry. Digital products or services can often be continuously updated and upgraded according to changes in consumer needs, and different functions can be continuously added to existing products to achieve diversified uses. Analyzing “killing mergers and acquisitions” in the digital economy essentially means paying attention to potential competition and innovation. In this regard, the US merger review guidelines have always used the concept of potential competition. The European Union has a similar concept, but it is usually limited to horizontal transactions and intentionally distinguished from "strangling mergers." In fact, neither so-called "killing mergers" nor potential competition have brought about new theories of competitive harm - they are still mainly horizontal concerns, and may also appear as non-horizontal concerns in individual cases. Taking the acquisition of a small start-up platform by a large platform as an example, from the perspective of traditional static competition, it seems that it can be directly concluded that after the acquisition of the start-up platform, it can no longer exert competitive pressure on the large platform, thus reducing the latter's competitive constraints; and from the perspective of dynamic competition, whether the start-up platform can form competitive constraints on the large platform and whether it has the conditions and possibilities to replace the latter. It is often impossible to determine when an acquisition occurs. This also includes the judgment of the innovation ability of a start-up platform in both cases of being acquired and not being acquired. The correctness of this judgment will not be verified due to the occurrence of the acquisition. The efficiency improvement and welfare increase after the acquisition and integration are usually visible to the naked eye. The complexity brought by these situations to the analysis can be said to be a new challenge for regulators. In individual cases, the review and investigation agency's evaluation of such mergers and acquisitions needs to comprehensively consider the above factors within the legal framework, rather than classifying "killer mergers", and there is no practice of inferring the competitive effects of such mergers and acquisitions.

Discussing the complexity of “killer mergers and acquisitions” in the digital economy will help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of w88 slot enforcement against related concentrated transactions. my country's current institutional rules can better regulate "strangling mergers and acquisitions" of super platforms. The 2022 revision of the Anti-Monopoly w88 slot clearly establishes the supervision of concentrated transactions that do not meet the reporting standards, and also establishes an assessment principle based on competitive effects, that is, supervision will only be imposed when "there is evidence that" transactions that do not meet the standards eliminate or restrict competition. Therefore, the standards established by my country’s Anti-Monopoly w88 slot and the State Council’s reporting standards actually advocate scientific, reasonable, effective, and optimal supervision, and balance the relationship between potential competition damage, prior intervention costs, competition, innovation, and the infinite possibilities of the market.

Attached original text link:https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/-f4QEUuQeog1cb8G-OJZ7A