Data as essential facility: competition and innovation in online media platforms.

The competitive strength of online businesses is increasingly being determined by the amount, variety and quality of the data they hold. Providers of online platforms such as search engines, social networks and e-commerce platforms employ business models that are dependent on the acquisition and monetisation of personal data of users.

Against this background, the thesis explores how existing competition concepts can be applied to data-related competition concerns in digital markets. The main focus is on potential refusals of dominant providers of online platforms to give access to their data. In line with its significance in the digital economy, data is becoming a necessary input of production for a variety of services competing with or complementary to the services offered by incumbent providers. By refusing to share information with potential competitors or new entrants, incumbents may limit effective competition and innovation to the detriment of consumers. In this context, the question rises whether such a denial of a dominant firm to grant competitors access to its dataset could constitute a refusal to deal under Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and lead to competition law liability under the so-called ‘essential facilities doctrine’. 

While the thesis concerns the application of EU competition law to a specific type of conduct, it also raises several broader and more fundamental issues including the appropriate analysis of multi-sided platforms under competition law, the trade-offs that have to be made between protecting different types of competition and innovation (competition in versus for the market; sustaining versus disruptive innovation), and the relationship between competition and data protection law.