미국 연방대법원의 American Express 판결이 양면 플랫폼에서의 관련시장 획정에 주는 함의

• Published in: 경쟁법연구 Vol. 40; pp. 142 - 183
• Main Authors: 강지원, Jiwon Kang, 조영은, Youngeun Jo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Korean
• Published: 한국경쟁법학회 30.11.2019
• Subjects: American Express 판결; credit-card market; market definition; online(digital) platforms; the American Express decision; two-sided markets; two-sided platforms; two-sided transaction platforms; 거래형 양면 플랫폼; 법학; 시장획정; 신용카드 시장; 양면 플랫폼; 양면시장; 온라인 플랫폼; 키워드close
• ISSN: 1598-2335; 2671-6402
• DOI: 10.35770/jkcl.2019.40..142

In Ohio v. American Express Co., The U.S. Supreme Court had its first opportunity to decide whether, in antitrust analysis, a relevant market involving a two-sided platform business model should be defined as one single market or two separate markets. The Court’s majority held that defining a single market encompassing both sides of a platform is a proper market definition at least for a particular subcategory of platforms called “two-sided transaction platforms.” A transaction platform, according to the Amex majority, supplies a service that facilitates a single simultaneous transaction between the two consumer groups on different sides of the platform-in this case, a credit-card transaction between a merchant and a cardholder. Because this single product is best understood as being jointly consumed by both sides’ consumer groups, a credit-card market should be defined as a whole, the Court’s majority opinion further explained. While the Amex decision was welcomed by some commentators for setting an unique precedent for platform market definition, the decision left many important questions unanswered, unfortunately. Relying heavily on the economic theory still subject to the ongoing debates in academia, the Court failed to account for what the rationale for its classification of transaction/non-transaction platforms is, given that transaction platforms such as Uber can still compete with traditional non-platform taxi services. The Court’s “single-market approach” also did not respond to a normative question of whether harm to one group of customers, in evaluating anti-competitive effects, can be justifiably offset by net gains to another customer group on the other side of the platform, let alone a practical issue of how to assess such balancing of effects. These issues will soon be revisited and tackled by the KFTC faced with emerging regulatory challenges in tech industry, as the industry landscape has went through an upheaval ever since the KFTC’s 10-year old precedent of the eBay/Gmarket merger case.