As part of the session ‘There is no limit to perfection, or should there be a Sixth Antimonopoly Package’ at the conference held on 19 September, the issues of improving antimonopoly legislation were discussed.
The sixth antitrust package involves the abolition of so-called ‘antitrust immunities’ for intellectual property, as well as the introduction of special rules for determining dominance for non-transactional digital platforms.
The issue of cancellation of antimonopoly immunities has a long history and is hotly debated. Evgeny expressed a compromise view that there should be no a priori immunity for intellectual property, but at the same time a balance should be found between the interests of right holders and their consumers and competitors. He noted that the existing wording of the legislation allows for effective application of antimonopoly prohibitions, as evidenced by numerous practices, and the issues of granting intellectual property rights can be resolved within the framework of relations on granting compulsory licences, which are regulated by civil legislation.
The panelists also discussed the specifics of antitrust regulation of non-transaction platforms, in particular, the approach to calculating the market shares of such services. Evgeny proposed to supplement the Procedure for the Analysis of Commodity Markets in this respect by including the specifics of analysing the services of non-transaction platforms.
