By Ma Yuan, Enterprise Research Institute, DRC

Research Report, No.205, 2019 (Total 5705) 2019-11-21

Abstract: In line with the principle of voluntary transactions, enterprises have the right to choose their transaction parties and to determine the content of the transaction. In the Internet market with fierce competitions, a series of refusal-to-deal cases have emerged including refusal to grant private technological benchmark to competitors, refusal to allow competitors to crawl their Internet data and refusal to permit competitors to make profits through abusing platform rules. These cases involve both large and small enterprises due to law enforcement by the government and the interests of related platforms. These cases are conducive to stimulating entities of various types to increase investment and inhibit “free-riding”, but in the meantime, it might bring about anti-competition problems. The pros and cons cannot be lumped together. The laws and regulations as well as judicial practices of Europe, the U.S. and China also show that the applicable articles for utilizing administrative means to regulate refusal-to-deal cases are relatively strict. It is suggested that work be done to maintain the principle of contract freedom, focus on the protection of fair competition and users’ rights, and properly deal with the relations between self-governance of platforms and government regulation. In addition, further efforts are needed to enhance the transparency of platform rules and avoid enforcing the opening of platform.

Key words: refusal-to-deal, necessary infrastructure, platform regulation