Recent studies on competition law and digital markets reveal that accumulating personal information through data collection and acquisition methods benefits consumers considerably. Free of charge, fast and personalised services and products are offered to consumers online. Collected data is now an indispensable part of online businesses to the point that a new economy, a data-driven sector, has emerged. Many markets such as the social network, search engine, online advertising and e-commerce are regarded as data-driven markets in which the utilisation of Big Data is a requisite for the success of operations. However, the accumulation and use of data brings competition law concerns as they contribute to market power in the online world, resulting in a few technology giants gaining unprecedented market power due to the Big Data accumulation, indirect network effects and the creation of online ecosystems. As technology giants have billions of consumers worldwide, data-driven markets are truly global. In these data-driven markets, technology giants abuse their dominant positions, but existing competition law tools seem ineffective in addressing market power and assessing abusive behaviour related to Big Data. This book argues that a novel approach to the data-driven sector must be developed through the application of competition law rules to address this. It argues that current and potential conflicts can be mitigated by extending the competition law assessment beyond the current competition law tools to offer a modernised and unified approach to the Big Data–related competition issues. Promoting new legal tests for addressing the market power of technology giants and assessing abusive behaviour in data-driven markets, this book advocates for cooperation between competition and data protection authorities. It will be of interest to students, academics and practitioners with an interest in competition law and data protection.

In this timely book, Beata Mäihäniemi analyses and evaluates how the characteristics of information as a good, as well as the characteristics of digital platforms, affect the application of competition law in both theory and practice.

Drawing insights from emergent properties and complexity science, Samson Y. Esayas examines the interplay between data privacy law and competition law to address challenges resulting from the commercialization of data.

This groundbreaking book explores the new legal and economic challenges triggered by big data, and analyses the interactions among and between intellectual property, competition law, free speech, privacy and other fundamental rights vis-à-vis big data analysis and algorithms.

This book explores the relationship between intellectual property law and competition law, proposing a harmonious equilibrium in the dynamic landscape of evolving technology. It explores how intellectual property rights (IPR) can be effectively balanced with competition law considerations, offering insights into navigating the evolving intersection of legal frameworks in the realm of technology and innovation. In the rapidly evolving landscape of India's legal framework, the intersection of IPR and competition law has become a critical focal point. This book dissects the regulatory landscape, offering a thorough analysis of India's competition law and its application in conjunction with patent, copyright, trademark, blockchain technologies, computer software, artificial intelligence, and more. Covering landmark legal decisions, precedents, and emerging trends that shape the balance between fostering innovation and preventing anticompetitive practices, the book also uses case studies involving WhatsApp Vs. CCI and Vidya Drolia case. Focusing on India, but with lessons for a global audience, the book brings together contributions from experts across disciplines, to promote innovative solutions to balancing IP and competition law with technological advancements. The book will be of interest to researchers in the field of the law of emerging technologies, IP law, and competition law.

In the contemporary information society, organisations increasingly rely on the collection and analysis of large-scale data (popularly called ‘big data’) to make decisions. These processes, which take place largely beyond the individual’s knowledge, produce a cascade of effects that go beyond privacy and data protection. Should we focus on the possibilities of tackling these often negative effects through other areas of law, or maybe even find new solutions to cope with the dark side of big data? This ground-breaking book is the first to address this crucially important question in detail. Among the issues raised in the analysis are such vital elements as the following: − what is meant by ‘big data’; – ‘privacy’ according to the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union; – what the European Union legal framework on privacy and data protection consists of and how it functions in the light of big data; – what companies, governments and other organisations are permitted to do with big data under the current regulatory framework; – the central importance of personal autonomy; – circumstances that influence whether or not the right to privacy is triggered; – big data’s possible impact on democracy through, inter alia, potentially limiting freedom of expression; – how governmental or corporate surveillance chills the receiver’s gathering of information and ideas; – selective offering of choices or information, or manipulation of people’s ideas; – procedural aspects that influence the extrapolation of normative concepts of privacy and data protection; and – how discrimination occurs in big data. This book foregrounds a critical scrutiny of commercial uses of big data – its scale, its limited capacity for independent oversight and the expected prevalence of interference with individuals’ rights. The author’s conclusions explore possible legal alternatives to mitigate the negative impact of big data, using legal instruments, case law and legal academic literature in her analysis. Because the amount of digital data keeps growing and the private lives of individuals are increasingly taking place online – and because of the opacity of the big data process, the fundamental values that are at stake, and the speed of technological developments compared to the pace of legal reform – this comprehensive assessment of flaws in the current framework and possible practical solutions will be warmly welcomed by practitioners, policymakers and government officials in all legal fields related to privacy and data protection.

In recent years, market definition has come under attack as an analytical tool of competition law. Scholars have increasingly questioned its usefulness and feasibility. That criticism comes into sharper relief in dynamic, innovation-driven markets, which do not correspond to the static markets on which the concept of the relevant market was modelled. This book explores that controversy from a comparative legal perspective, taking into account both EU competition and US antitrust law. It examines the manifold ways in which courts and competition authorities in the EU and US have factored innovation-related considerations into market delineation, covering: innovative product markets, product differentiation, future markets, issues going beyond market definition proper – such as innovation competition, innovation markets and potential competition –, intellectual property rights, innovative aftermarkets and multi-sided platforms. This book finds that going forward, the role of market definition in dynamic contexts needs to focus on its function of market characterisation rather than on the assessment of market power.

The digitization of industrial processes has suddenly taken a great leap forward, with burgeoning applications in manufacturing, transportation and numerous other areas. Many stakeholders, however, are uncertain about the opportunities and risks associated with it and what it really means for businesses and national economies. Clarity of legal rules is now a pressing necessity. This book, the first to deal with legal questions related to Industrial Internet, follows a multidisciplinary approach that is instructed by law concerning intellectual property, data protection, competition, contracts and licensing, focusing on business, technology and policy-driven issues. Experts in various relevant fields of science and industry measure the legal tensions created by Industrial Internet in our global economy and propose solutions that are both theoretically valuable and concretely practical, identifying workable business models and practices based on both technical and legal knowledge. Perspectives include the following: regulating Industrial Internet via intellectual property rights (IPR); data ownership versus control over data; artificial intelligence and IPR infringement; patent owning in Industrial Internet; abuse of dominance in Industrial Internet platforms; data collaboration, pooling and hoarding; legal implications of granular versioning technologies; and misuse of information for anticompetitive purposes. The book represents a record of a major collaborative project, held between 2016 and 2019 in Finland, involving a number of universities, technology firms and law firms. As Industrial Internet technologies are already being used in several businesses, it is of paramount importance for the global economy that legal, business and policy-related challenges are promptly analyzed and discussed. This crucially important book not only reveals the legal and policy-related issues that we soon will have to deal with but also facilitates the creation of legislation and policies that promote Industrial-Internet-related technologies and new business opportunities. It will be warmly welcomed by practitioners, patent and other IPR attorneys, innovation economists and companies operating in the Industrial Internet ecosystem, as well as by competition authorities and other policymakers.

The right to privacy is a fundamental right. Along with the related right to personal data protection, it has come to take a central place in contemporary employment relations and shows significant relevance for the future of work. This thoroughly researched volume, which offers insightful essays by leading European academics and policymakers in labour and employment law, is the first to present a thoroughly up-to-date Europe-wide survey and analysis of the intensive and growing interaction of workplace relations systems with developments in privacy law. With abundant reference to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, and the work of the International Labour Organisation, the book proceeds as a series of country chapters, each by a recognised expert in a specific jurisdiction. Legal comparison is based on a questionnaire circulated to the contributors in advance. Each country chapter addresses the national legal weight of such issues and topics as the following: interaction of privacy and data protection law; legitimacy, purpose limitation, and data minimisation; transparency; role of consent; artificial intelligence and automated decision-making; health-related data, including biometrics and psychological testing; monitoring and surveillance; and use of social media. A detailed introductory overview begins the volume. The research for this book is based on a dynamic methodology, founded in scientific desk research and expert networking. Recognising that the need for further guidance for privacy at work has been demonstrated by various European and international bodies, this book delivers a signal contribution to the field for social partners, practitioners, policymakers, scholars, and all other stakeholders working at the crossroads of privacy, data protection, and labour law.

This book further develops both the traditional and the behavioural approach to competition law, and applies these approaches to a variety of timely issues. It discusses several fundamental questions regarding competition law and economics, and explores the applications of competition law and economics. In turn, the book analyses the interplay of intellectual property rights and patents in various aspects of competition law, and investigates the impacts that developments in information technology, such as big data analytics, have on competition law. The book also discusses the impact of energy law reforms on energy markets from a competition law perspective. Competition law is a classic field of economic analysis. This is largely due to the fact that competition law uses terms such as market, price, and competition and must therefore rely on economic know-how and analyses. In the United States, economic analysis has greatly influenced not just the scholarship on antitrust law, but also judicial decisions and agency enforcement. Antitrust law and economics are based on the traditional paradigm of neoclassical economics, which relies on the assumption that the market players, i.e. consumers and producers, are rational. This approach to competition law was later received in Europe under the banner of a “more economic approach”. For the past two decades, behavioural law and economics, which seeks to generate better insights into legal phenomena by providing more realistic psychological foundations for economic models, and to offer a multitude of applications in legislation and legal adjudication, has challenged the traditional economic approach to law in general and, more recently, to competition law specifically.