The Law Society of Scotland’s Competition Law sub-committee, together with our Consumer Law and Privacy Law sub-committees, responded to the Digital Competition Expert Panel’s consultation on the state of competition in the digital economy.
In its response, it welcomed the UK Government’s recognition of the importance of ensuring that the competition law framework is fit for purpose in the context of regulating digital markets. The development of digital markets raises a number of interesting legal and policy issues, which attract increasing interest from the legal profession. the Law Society have identified a number of potential benefits and harms of the current trends in the evolution of those markets and our thoughts are set out in our response. An overarching consideration is how an individual market is defined or how the relevant market is determined in this context. If the market cannot itself be identified, this could lead to an inability to establish dominance, relevant to considerations of whether a particular transaction is anti-competitive.
