Region: Japan

Businesses in Japan have claimed that contracts with major digital platforms – including Google and Facebook – are restrictive and difficult to change.

30 April 2020

Unilateral changes to terms and conditions by restaurant review websites could constitute an abuse of superior bargaining power, Japan’s competition authority has said.

23 March 2020

The head of Australia’s competition authority said yesterday that his country’s economy is “too concentrated”. Speaking during the conference dinner at the International Competition Network’s merger workshop, Rod Sims said the stakes of getting merger control right are high. He opined that if Adam Smith, viewed by some as the “father of capitalism”, were alive today, Smith would “believe our economies are now much too concentrated and that we have collectively all failed in our mission.” Competition agencies should step back and ask themselves whether their merger regimes are facilitating “the level of competition needed for a well-functioning market economy,” Sims suggested.

28 February 2020

Japan’s antitrust watchdog will probe e-commerce platform Rakuten over plans to adopt a free shipping policy.

23 January 2020

Japan is considering a bill that would require large technology companies to disclose the terms of their contracts with customers and report to the government on their internal operations.

19 December 2019

This week was a bit slow in Asia-Pacific in terms of major news stories, but read on for many interesting developments on mergers, cases, authorisation requests for certain conduct and more. In addition to all of the regular content, next week we will be reporting from our inaugural conference in mainland China – GCR Live IP and Antitrust Beijing. Enforcement officials from China, Japan and the US are scheduled to speak on topics including intellectual property and industrial policy.

29 November 2019

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” – where there are the signs of something, that something likely exists. Competition enforcers believe that applies to their approach: that if it appears that a merger will harm competition, then it likely will. And especially in already-consolidated sectors, antitrust watchdogs see themselves as the fire doors preventing the harm from spreading. We have coverage this week of a conditionally cleared deal in the consolidating Korean telecommunications market; preliminary concerns about a deal in Australia; an Australian enforcer’s comments on killer acquisitions; and the publication of our survey of Japan's competition bar.

15 November 2019

After several years of treading water, Japan’s Fair Trade Commission has a new focus on platforms and improvements to its leniency regime, which bode well for the future of the country’s competition community. Matt Richards ranks the high performers.

13 November 2019

Digital platforms that give themselves or their related companies preferential treatment by arbitrarily manipulating search algorithms could run afoul of Japan’s antitrust law, the country’s competition watchdog has said.

01 November 2019

Japan’s antitrust watchdog has accepted commitments to resolve its probe into an e-commerce platform’s contracts with accommodation providers.

29 October 2019