Coherence Between Data Protection and Competition Law in Digital Markets


Book Description

In digital markets, data protection and competition law affect each other in diverse and intricate ways. Their entanglement has triggered a global debate on how these two areas of law should interact to effectively address new harms and ensure that the digital economy flourishes. Coherence between Data Protection and Competition Law in Digital Markets offers a blueprint for bridging the disconnect between data protection and competition law and ensuring a coherent approach towards their enforcement in digital markets. Specifically, this book focuses on the evolution of data protection and competition law, their underlying rationale, their key features and common objectives, and provides a series of examples to demonstrate how the same empirical phenomena in digital markets pose a common challenge to protecting personal data and promoting market competitiveness. A panoply of theoretical and empirical commonalities between these two fields of law, as this volume shows, are barely mirrored in the legal, enforcement, policy, and institutional approaches in the EU and beyond, where the silo approach continues to prevail. The ideas that Majcher puts forward for a more synergetic integration of data protection and competition law are anchored in the concept of 'sectional coherence'. This new coherence-centred paradigm reimagines the interpretation and enforcement of data protection and competition law as mutually cognizant and reciprocal, allowing readers to explore, in an innovative way, the interface between these legal fields and identify positive interactions, instead of merely addressing inconsistencies and tensions. This book reflects on the conceptual, practical, institutional, and constitutional implications of the transition towards coherence and the relevance of its findings for other jurisdictions.




Research Handbook on Sustainability and Competition Law


Book Description

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. This Research Handbook explores the complex interplay between competition law and sustainability, and also provides key insights into the role and limitations that tax, environmental laws, consumer laws, and social laws have in promoting sustainability. A distinguished array of international experts examine core principles of environmental and social sustainability, delve into the economic dynamics that shape this multidimensional relationship, and critically analyse how competition law and policy can both positively and negatively shape sustainability outcomes.




The Roles of Innovation in Competition Law Analysis


Book Description

Rapid technological innovations have challenged the conventional application of antitrust and competition law across the globe. Acknowledging these challenges, this original work analyses the roles of innovation in competition law analysis and reflects on how competition and antitrust law can be refined and tailored to innovation.




Research Handbook on Privacy and Data Protection Law


Book Description

This Research Handbook is an insightful overview of the key rules, concepts and tensions in privacy and data protection law. It highlights the increasing global significance of this area of law, illustrating the many complexities in the field through a blend of theoretical and empirical perspectives.




Transition and Coherence in Intellectual Property Law


Book Description

This volume is for students and scholars of intellectual property law, practitioners seeking creative arguments from across the field, and policymakers searching for solutions to changing social and technological issues. The book explores the tensions between two fundamentally competing demands made of IP law.




Big Data and Competition Policy


Book Description

The first text to provide understanding of the important new issue of Big Data and how it relates to competition laws and policy, both in the EU and US.




Market definition and market power in the platform economy


Book Description

With the rise of digital platforms and the natural tendency of markets involving platforms to become concentrated, competition authorities and courts are more frequently in a position to investigate and decide merger and abuse cases that involve platforms. This report provides guidance on how to define markets and on how to assess market power when dealing with two-sided platforms. DEFINITION Competition authorities and courts are well advised to uniformly use a multi-markets approach when defining markets in the context of two-sided platforms. The multi-markets approach is the more flexible instrument compared to the competing single-market approach that defines a single market for both sides of a platform, as the former naturally accounts for different substitution possibilities by the user groups on the two sides of the platform. While one might think of conditions under which a single-market approach could be feasible, the necessary conditions are so severe that it would only be applicable under rare circumstances. To fully appreciate business activities in platform markets from a competition law point of view, and to do justice to competition law’s purpose, which is to protect consumer welfare, the legal concept of a “market” should not be interpreted as requiring a price to be paid by one party to the other. It is not sufficient to consider the activities on the “unpaid side” of the platform only indirectly by way of including them in the competition law analysis of the “paid side” of the platform. Such an approach would exclude certain activities and ensuing positive or negative effects on consumer welfare altogether from the radar of competition law. Instead, competition practice should recognize straightforwardly that there can be “markets” for products offered free of charge, i.e. without monetary consideration by those who receive the product. ASSESSMENT The application of competition law often requires an assessment of market power. Using market shares as indicators of market power, in addition to all the difficulties in standard markets, raises further issues for two-sided platforms. When calculating revenue shares, the only reasonable option is to use the sum of revenues on all sides of the platform. Then, such shares should not be interpreted as market shares as they are aggregated over two interdependent markets. Large revenue shares appear to be a meaningful indicator of market power if all undertakings under consideration serve the same sides. However, they are often not meaningful if undertakings active in the relevant markets follow different business models. Given potentially strong cross-group external effects, market shares are less apt in the context of two-sided platforms to indicate market power (or the lack of it). Barriers to entry are at the core of persistent market power and, thus, the entrenchment of incumbent platforms. They deserve careful examination by competition authorities. Barriers to entry may arise due to users’ coordination failure in the presence of network effect. On two-sided platforms, users on both sides of the market have to coordinate their expectations. Barriers to entry are more likely to be present if an industry does not attract new users and if it does not undergo major technological change. Switching costs and network effects may go hand in hand: consumer switching costs sometimes depend on the number of platform users and, in this case, barriers to entry from consumer switching costs increase with platform size. Since market power is related to barriers to entry, the absence of entry attempts may be seen as an indication of market power. However, entry threats may arise from firms offering quite different services, as long as they provide a new home for users’ attention and needs.




The Risk-Based Approach to Data Protection


Book Description

The concept of a risk-based approach to data protection came to the fore during the overhaul process of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). At its core, it consists of endowing the regulated organizations that process personal data with increased responsibility for complying with data protection mandates. Such increased compliance duties are performed through risk management tools. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of this legal and policy development, which considers a legal, historical, and theoretical perspective. By framing the risk-based approach as a sui generis implementation of a specific regulation model known as meta regulation, this book provides a recollection of the policy developments that led to the adoption of the risk-based approach in light of regulation theory and debates. It also discusses a number of salient issues pertaining to the risk-based approach, such as its rationale, scope, and meaning; the role for regulators; and its potential and limits. The book also looks at they way it has been undertaken in major statutes with a focus on key provisions, such as data protection impact assessments or accountability. Finally, the book devotes considerable attention to the notion of risk. It explains key terms such as risk assessment and management. It discusses in-depth the role of harms in data protection, the meaning of a data protection risk, and the difference between risks and harms. It also critically analyses prevalent data protection risk management methodologies and explains the most important caveats for managing data protection risks.




The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)


Book Description

This book provides expert advice on the practical implementation of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and systematically analyses its various provisions. Examples, tables, a checklist etc. showcase the practical consequences of the new legislation. The handbook examines the GDPR’s scope of application, the organizational and material requirements for data protection, the rights of data subjects, the role of the Supervisory Authorities, enforcement and fines under the GDPR, and national particularities. In addition, it supplies a brief outlook on the legal consequences for seminal data processing areas, such as Cloud Computing, Big Data and the Internet of Things.Adopted in 2016, the General Data Protection Regulation will come into force in May 2018. It provides for numerous new and intensified data protection obligations, as well as a significant increase in fines (up to 20 million euros). As a result, not only companies located within the European Union will have to change their approach to data security; due to the GDPR’s broad, transnational scope of application, it will affect numerous companies worldwide.