Joint Dominance, Vertical Agreements, And Deep Discounts: Legal Gaps In CCI’s Oversight Of Digital Giants
- IJLLR Journal
- Mar 2
- 2 min read
Sneka E, LLM (Corporate & Commercial Law) at Christ Deemed University, Bangalore
ABSTRACT
The rapid growth of digital and online markets have resulted in many unexpected challenges in regulation of competition in the market. In India, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has to respond to varieties of market power exercised by the digital market giants. This paper aims to identify and examine the legal and regulatory gaps in the enforcement of provisions regarding anti-competitive behaviours like joint dominance, vertical agreements and practices like deep discounting by the CCI. There has been a huge focus in cartel enforcement, abuse of dominance and monopoly in mergers but there has been a lack of focus of inquiry when it comes to inquiry in the intersection of the digital market with joint dominance and vertical agreements. The research methodology used in the paper is doctrinal and qualitative to examine the statutory provisions, case laws to derive substantial and procedural conclusions about India’s competition law regime. It concludes that the silence of the statute regarding the joint dominance shows that CCI is unable to take actions against collective market power of digital platforms, vertical agreements in algorithm driven markets are not addressed completely and deep discounting is unevenly approached as well. There are also institutional hurdles like timelines of procedures, evidentiary burdens and also lack of sector specific expertise limit the ability of CCI to effectively regulate the rapidly evolving digital market. The paper concludes with proposed reforms such as the statutory recognition of joint dominance, adoption of effective analytical practices for vertical agreements in digital platforms and also guidelines on deep or predatory discounting. The paper also discusses some best international practices for effective regulation which is relevant for Indian market characteristics and also provides a legal and institutional reform to promote the CCI’s regulation and its effectiveness to maintain the competition in the digital economy.
Keywords: Joint dominance, Vertical agreements, Deep discounting, The Competition Act, 2002, Competition Commission of India
