The Russian regulator has proposed to extend antimonopoly regulation to social networks and search engines.
The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS of Russia) proposes to extend antitrust regulation to social networks, search networks, as well as video hosting platforms, the head of the agency Maxim Shaskolsky said.
"Regulation should not be fragmented, it should be full-fledged for all digital markets. And it will be correct in the law to also define criteria for non-transactional platforms, such as social networks, search networks, video-hosting platforms,"
he said during a plenary session at the Antimonopoly Forum 2024.
According to him, the criteria for regulating non-transactional platforms will be worked out jointly with market participants and the expert community. The head of the FAS reminded that in spring of this year the moratorium on inspections of IT-companies was canceled, which currently allows for inspections of transactional platforms, such as marketplaces and cab aggregators.
At the same time, speaking about marketplaces, Shaskolsky noted that the FAS does not support the installation of completely free returns on them.
"There are proposals that there should be free returns on goods. We do not support free returns, because these returns are used by individual market participants to influence competitors,"
he added.
Shaskolsky also reported on FAS's intention to exclude from the antimonopoly legislation the provision that relations related to the realization of rights to the results of intellectual activity are not covered by the law on competition. This initiative will be included in the "sixth antimonopoly package" of bills, which the agency is currently working on and which is aimed primarily at digital markets.
It refers to situations when domestic companies faced with the actions of Russian software developers to inflate prices for software products after foreign developers left the market.
"In this situation, antimonopoly regulation measures could have been taken, but now the provisions of the law on the protection of competition explicitly establish that the prohibition of monopolistic activities does not apply to the results of intellectual property, intellectual activity (...) We are not talking about FAS interference in the very process of creating the results of intellectual activity, we are talking about control and the ability to actively suppress abuses in the event that a company occupies a dominant position,"
Shaskolsky explained.
Sources: RIA Novosti, Interfax
