Legal Research On The Definition Of "related Markets" In The Internet Industry

Any competition occurs in a certain range of the market.In order to judge whether the behavior of the enterprise hindered the competition,we must first to confirm the market scope of the enterprise,and which constitutes the relevant market.The relevant market is a key subject in the filed of the anti-monopoly law all the time.Defining the relevant market is a basic work in the most antitrust cases,and which is also the precondition of evaluating the market power and calculating the market share.Especially in the cases of abusing of market dominant position and concentration of undertakings,it's very important to the enterprise that the judicial authority defines the relevant market scientifically and accurately.In recent years,the Internet trade achieves rapid development,which profoundly affects people's work and life.At the same time,The relevant market definition,in the anti-monopoly of the Internet,is still the starting point of analyzing the market competition.However,the Internet trade has formed unique characteristics in the process of development,such as network externalities and two-sided market and so on,and there are many differences between Internet market and traditional market.Therefore,traditional methods are facing a lot of limitations when defining the relevant market of the Internet trade.In this paper,based on the traditional theory of definition of the relevant market,I firstly state general methods of defining the relevant market.Then,I explain the features of the Internet trade and analyze limitations of traditional methods when defining the relevant market of the Internet trade.At the last,on the basis of drawing lessons from the United States and the European Union,I put forward some recommendations to improve the relevant market definition of the Internet trade.This paper is divided into the following four parts:The first part mainly discusses the basic theory of the relevant market,including the concept and constitute and three methods of the relevant market.And then it analyses the role of the relevant market definition in antitrust,laid a theoretical basis for the relevant market definition of the Internet trade.The second part states the features of the Internet trade,analyze the otherness between the Internet market and traditional market.Then it points out the problems of defining the relevant market of the Internet trade by traditional methods.The third part introduces some judicial precedents about defining the relevant market of the Internet trade of The United States and the European Union,by which we can learn about their thinking of the relevant product market and the relevant geography market definition,and summarize useful experience and enlightenment to our country.The fourth part,on the basis of summarizing the problems and experience,it puts forward some legislative suggestions and judicial suggestions to improve the relevant market definition of the Internet trade.