An article by Prof Dr David Bartlitz entitled "Abuse of a dominant market position by favouring own services" was published in issue 30/2025 of the Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsrecht (ZIP).
In the Google Shopping decision of 10 September 2024, the European Court of Justice ruled for the first time that positive discrimination against Google's own price comparison service compared to competing price comparison services on the market for general online search services constitutes an abuse of a dominant position. If the significance of this decision for the economics of digital platforms is evident, the question arises from a legal perspective - which was not answered by the General Court or the ECJ in the proceedings - as to how such practices of self-favouritism can generally be classified in the dogmatic system of (conventional) antitrust law and (digital) law under the Digital Markets Act. Prof Dr Bartlitz's study comes to the conclusion that such practices constitute an independent group of cases under Art. 102(1) TFEU and at the same time a breach of duty under Art. 6(5) DMA, whereby in future cases both regulatory regimes are to be applied in parallel. However, there are differences with regard to civil law sanctions.
The full text of the review article is available free of charge from the university library.
