Comments on the Facebook Case
The Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf (Oberlandesgericht) decided on 26 August 2019 to grant suspensive effect to Facebook's application against a decision of the Bundeskartellamt. The decision of the Bundeskartellamt from Februar 2019 is seen as a landmark case for regulating digital markets with antitrust law. Facebook had been ordered not to combine data of the Facebook service itself with data from other services such as Instagram, WhatsApp or third-party websites. With the decision of the Düsseldorf court, enforcement of this order is now stopped. Professor Rupprecht Podszun commented on this important development in several media, e.g. in leading German media such as FAZ,
Süddeutsche Zeitung,
Handelsblatt und
Deutschlandfunk. He also spoke with
ZDNet and
TechCrunch (both in English). In our blog
D'Kart he gives a more detailed account. The Bundeskartellamt has announced they will appeal the Düsseldorf decision to the Bundesgerichtshof.