India has finally started opening its eyes towards the principle of Network Neutrality and its potential violation !! The Economic Times yesterday carried an excellent article on the subject. We strictly feel its about time the issue started gaining prominence in our Country !!
For previous posts o network neutrality on this Blog, see here, here and here.
The ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India, released a press statement yesterday stating that “the Competition Commission of India has started facilitating competition assessment of rules, regulations and government policies, contents of which may inadvertently impact the competitive atmosphere adversely.” It also stated that the process was for “evaluating government policies, regulations, rules and laws for identification of those which unnecessarily impede competition and suggest measures to redesign the identified ones so that competition is not unduly inhibited.”
The task has been assigned to the CCI with the intention to begin implementation of the National Competition Policy (Apologies. Unfortunately, the latest draft seems to have disappeared off the internet. Will update this post as soon as it is found.)
The press statement can be found here
Two of the complaints presently before the Commission are those filed against Hockey India by several Hockey Olympians as well as a group of chess players who have separately approached the Competition Commission of India (CCI) over the abuse of dominant positions by the respective authorities overlooking their sports in India.
Hockey India, which holds the sole mandate to govern and conduct all activities for hockey in India warned players that if they participated in the World Series Hockey (WSH) proposed by the Indian Hockey Federation, they would lose their position in the national team.
Interestingly, there is little to go by precedent on this specific issue, i.e., whether a sports regulatory body abuses its dominant position by imposing certain restrictive conditions upon the players affiliated to it, and therefore the Commission could end up conducting some pioneering research and analysis in this field. while there have been cases on the legality of exclusivity arrangements in the sports sectors regarding sports equipment and sportswear ( See American needle v. NFL), the closest dispute to the present issue arose in the EU in the withdrawn preliminary reference in the Oulmers Case, which involved issues relating to the right of clubs to be compensated by national federations for the release of their players for international games and tournaments. It was initiated by a complaint lodged by ASOBAL (the Spanish Handball League) before the European Commission in March 2009. The complainant argued that by precluding the payment of a compensation to clubs the regulations governing the release of players restricted competition were contrary to both articles 101 and 102 TFEU. The European Commission took an interest in the case and started a preliminary investigation which was only put to an end pursuant to an agreement between ASOBAL and the European Handball Federation.
It will be interesting to see how the Commission handles this complaint.
The Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat (JGLS) and the Asian-African Legal Consultative Organisation (AALCO) recently held a two-day conference with a focus on “Competition Law in emerging economies: Trends and Developments in India”. The conference venue was the AALCO office on February 28, 2012 and the JGLS university premises on February 29, 2012 and attended by experts in the field of competition law, lawyers, academics, representatives from law firms and JGLS students
Click here to read a detailed cover of the program.
Indian Competition and Anti-Trust Blog 