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

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.