Sneak preview of the future application of European competition law on the Internet?: Cisco and Messagenet

Publishers Abstract:

In its ruling in the case annotated, the General Court assessed the legality of the European Commission's decision approving the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft. The judgment is instructive, because it involves the application of traditional merger analysis to online services and points out the limits of some of the commonly used competition law tools in dynamic and rapidly evolving industries.

In particular, the General Court made some interesting remarks on the appropriateness of market shares as a proxy for assessing dominance in online markets. The General Court put earlier decisions involving interoperability and network effects into further perspective. As will be discussed in this case note, the General Court's findings may limit the scope for future enforcement of competition law on the Internet. The General Court's judgment was not appealed to the ECJ. The Microsoft/Skype merger decision and the subsequent Cisco judgment raise several interesting issues concerning the application of competition law to Internet services.