Anti-monopoly Law Regulation Of Abusing Market Dominant Position In The Internet Industry

With the rapid development of Internet industry, anti-monopoly cases gradually increase in network area. The problems of anti-monopoly law applicable in Internet industry cause widespread concern in both theory and practice of communities. Unlike traditional industries, Internet industry has the characteristics of two-sided markets characteristics, strong network effects, technological innovation and globalization. These features will distinguish Internet industry from traditional industries in defining the relevant market, identifying the market dominant position and the behaviors of abusing market dominant position. Exploring this issue will solve the problems of anti-monopoly law applicable in Internet industry and is conducive to the improvement of Chinese anti-monopoly law.In this paper, by using empirical analysis approaches, comparative analysis approaches and normative analysis approaches and combining the theory of two-sided markets, the relevant market, the dominant market position and the behaviors of abusing dominant market position of Internet industry were defined. Firstly, inspection of the source of profit of platform enterprises must be focused on to define the relevant market in Internet industry. On the one hand, the final goal of platform enterprises the same as traditional enterprises pursuit maximum profit, so defining the relevant market is essential to investigate the state of platform enterprises’ competitions in the process of pursuing profit; on the other hand, the characteristics of two-sided markets lowered the reasonable substitutability extent and weakened the cross elasticity of demand, which made a reasonable alternative analysis and supply of alternative analysis difficult to carry out in anti-monopoly laws and regulations, so a new method to define the relevant market had to be found. Secondly, the ease of market entry, cross-network effects, the degree of control for standard and the status of ownership of intellectual property for critical facilities are particularly needed to consider in the study based on market shares to identify the market dominant position in Internet industry, fairness and justice in the allocation of the burden of proof should be paid greater attention. Thirdly, from two-sided markets pricing strategy point of view, with current provisions of the combination of anti-monopoly law, the pricing behaviors of platform enterprises in Internet industry are not parts of the anti-monopoly regulations of discrimination or predatory pricing behaviors, and identifying the behaviors of abusing the market dominant position should be applied in reasonable principles and be based on the two-sided markets theory of screening whether they are monopoly cases in anti-monopoly law or rationally allocate the burden of proof. In the analysis of above all, the3Q dispute was analyzed and the relevant market as the online advertising market of China was defined. Tencent does not have a dominant market position, so the behavior of "forcing the user to make a second election" is not the behavior of abusing market dominant position. Finally, this paper gives some legislative proposals to perfect anti-monopoly regulations of abusing market dominant position in Internet industry in order to better regulate the behavior of abusing market dominant position.