Description

This comprehensive presentation was delivered by ISAIL President Abhivardhan at the prestigious 10th Winter School on Economics of Competition Law (November 5-9, 2025), organized by CUTS Institute for Regulation and Competition (CIRC)—a globally recognized not-for-profit research and capacity-building organization dedicated to competition law, regulation, and sustainable development.

What This Presentation Covers:

This in-depth legal analysis examines how data has transformed from a business asset into a powerful competitive weapon, exploring the abuse of market dominance through data-driven practices in digital markets. The presentation provides cutting-edge insights into:

1. Legal Recognition of Significant Market Players in Global Competition Laws

• Comprehensive comparison of SSDE (India), Gatekeepers (EU DMA), Strategic Market Status (UK), and Super-Large Platforms (China)

• Quantitative and qualitative designation criteria across jurisdictions

• Currently designated entities and their core platform services

• Ex-ante vs. ex-post regulatory approaches

2. The Anticompetitive Nature of Corporate Bye-Laws on Data Privacy & Quality

• Landmark case studies: Facebook/Bundeskartellamt (Germany) and WhatsApp/CCI (India)

• How privacy policies become instruments of exploitative and exclusionary abuse

• Data feedback loops and network effects entrenching dominance

• Privacy as non-price competition parameter

• Comparative analysis of GDPR, DPDPA 2023, and LGPD data protection rights

• Third-party data sharing agreements as foreclosure mechanisms

3. Data Outflow, Visitation & Portability in Competition Law

• Data portability obligations under GDPR Article 20 and DMA requirements

• Real-time data mirroring and visitation rights for interoperability

• Essential facilities doctrine application to data access

• Consumer switching costs and lock-in effects

• Competition law tools to combat data hoarding

4. Behavioural and Structural Remedies for Digital Anticompetitive Practices

• Conceptual framework: Terminating, preventing, and restoring competition

• Economic rationale for remedy selection in digital markets

• Section 27 Competition Act and Supreme Court’s Karnataka Film Exhibitors judgment

• DMA Articles 5, 6, and 7 obligations (self-preferencing prohibitions, interoperability mandates, data access requirements)

• Case studies: Google Android (India), WhatsApp-Meta remedy modifications, EU enforcement

• When behavioral remedies fail and structural separation becomes necessary

• The WhatsApp-Meta NCLAT case: Judicial retreat from data-specific behavioral remedies

5. Soft Law and Data Protection in Cases of Regulatory Arbitrage

• Defining soft law in competition and data protection contexts

• CMA-ICO Joint Statement model for inter-authority coordination

• OECD recommendations and ICN frameworks

• Regulatory arbitrage mechanisms: Forum shopping under GDPR, data localization strategies, jurisdictional gaps

• Facebook Ireland case study on lead supervisory authority exploitation

• India’s CCI-Data Protection Board overlap and absence of coordination frameworks

• How platforms weaponize regulatory fragmentation as competitive strategy