Many of the world’s most valuable companies adopt the online platform business model to bring together different groups of customers—suppliers and customers—seeking to transact with oneanother. This Article aims to establish the correct legal characterization of these platforms and the implications thereof for competition law purposes. To do so, it explores two related questions: first, whether platforms are agents of their suppliers; and, second, whether the competition law prohibition of anticompetitive agreements should apply to agreements between platforms and suppliers, which restrict competition on the relevant market for the products/services regarding which the platform facilitates a transaction. The first question arises because the platform business model resembles an agency arrangement more than any other, and many platforms selfproclaim to be agents of their suppliers. Yet, the decisional practice and commentary have developed on the premise that they are not agents. The second question arises due to the “agency rule” under the “single economic entity doctrine,” according to which restrictive agreements between an agent and a principal take place within the same “undertaking” and are consequently immune from the competition law prohibition of anticompetitive agreements between separate undertakings.
Pınar Akman