India: Issued NCLAT ruling in Google's appeal of CCI remedial obligations imposed due to abuse of dominance findings

On 29 March 2023, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) issued its ruling in the appeal filed by Google regarding the Competition Commission of India's (CCI) findings that Google had leveraged its dominant position in the online search and app store markets to deny competitors market entry and maintain its dominant position, and used mandatory pre-installation of Google Mobile Suite to impose unfair conditions on mobile device manufacturers. The NCLAT maintained the imposed fine of INR 1337.76 and modified several remedial directives imposed by CCI. The NCLAT ruled that Google did abuse its dominant market position and hindered the development of Android Operating System (OS) alternatives, and maintained the imposed fine of INR 1'337.76 crores. However, the NCLAT concurred with some of Google's arguments in the appeal and amended a number of remedial obligations placed by the CCI. For instance, the CCI had instructed Google to share their Play Service application programming interfaces (API) with third-party developers. The NCLAT agreed with the argument that these APIs are considered proprietary software and should not be allowed to be shared without charge.