COMPETITION LAW REGIME: A COMPARATIVE LEGAL ANALYSIS BETWEEN INDIA AND USA

[Prerna Jain Kala is a final year student at K.L.E. Society's Law College, Bangalore]

Introduction

Antitrust law is a set of legislation aimed at preventing market distortions produced by anticompetitive economic conduct. As a result, it allows for the integration of the Internal Market, consumer protection, competitor protection, competition freedom, and economic efficiency. The goal of competition law is to prevent monopolistic, unfair, and restrictive trade practises by enacting rules that promote competition and competitive outcomes in markets. This article examines the notion and need for competition law, as well as competition law in other nations, agreement prohibition, abuse of dominant position, combination rules, and competition law enforcement.

The final section of this article contrasts India's and the United States' competition enforcement mechanisms. The researcher will compare the eldest method of competition rule, the United States, along with some of the newest methods, the Indian approach, in this article. He points forth various advantages and disadvantages of the American approach. He also gives the Indian government credit for creating the conditions necessary to generate a reliable body of law.

Description

We shall compare and contrast the legal systems used by the United States and India to execute and impose their regulations in this proposal. The most well-known Sherman Act of 1890 was enacted in the year 1890. This law had the effect of prohibiting business arrangements that could lead to trade restraint, as well as attempts to acquire monopoly.

This statute was created in response to railroad firms' unethical actions, which included abusing their monopoly position and causing harm to ranchers, movers, and additional trades. In addition, several businesses had 'trusts' and implemented strategies to force rivals out of the marketplace. As a result, Section 1 of the Sherman Act declares that any agreement, whether in the manner of a combination, trust, or otherwise, or some conspiracy, which may result in trade restraint, is illegal. Following that, Section 24 made it illegal to strive to gain control in a marketplace.

The competition rule in India was enacted as a consequence of Articles 38 and 39 of the Indian Structure, which, among other things, states that the national may strive to loan the wellbeing of the community by safeguarding efficiently, as it might be, a communal appeal in which fairness, communal, monetary, and radical, should direct all basics of nation-wide existence, and that the national must, exactly, straight its plan to safeguarding:

● That the group's material assets are disseminated in such a way that they best provide the assistance of the whole.

● That the financial structure's functioning does not cause the type of treasures and the process of nature to be at a drawback on a regular basis.

The case of Neeraj Malhotra v. Deustche Post Bank Home Finance ltd. and others, commonly known as the payments loan case, in India illustrates the dimensions of 'Rule of Reason' and 'Per se Rule'. The Sherman Act of 1890, as well as the landmark case of "North Pacific Railway Co. v United States and Others," gave rise to these regulations in the United States.

"There is no established precedent on most fundamental problems," said Dr. K.D. Singh, Deputy Director (Law) at the Competition [1] Commission, at a 2015 Symposium on Competition Law. India's competition system is a work in progress and will require additional time to end, but it is an excellent opportunity for India to learn from the opulent past of the United States' competition law government. I'm not recommending that Indian officers attempt to imitate the American system. In its 126-year endeavour to construct a sound competition law regime, the United States has committed numerous severe errors. Although the United States has remedied many of its historical errors, the competitive regime in the United States is still far away from perfect, as section II of this editorial illustrates.

The 2015 Symposium on Indian Contest Rule Transcription illustrates well-advised discussions on all of the most pressing problems confronting the planet's more general competition regulation. The debates took largely on scholarly literature as well as the experiences of institutions in the United States and the European Union that administer competition law. Several of the topics discussed at the conference are difficult, but the modern life of the arguments shows that India has a fair chance of efficiently resolving them.

Indian academics and administration officers can examine the story of American competition law and develop a competition ruling government that works well. "Take the best and leave the rest," supporters for legal change in the U.S. argue. India can benefit from the United States' prosecution and mistake approach to establishing a great competition regulation government. India could use the United States' competition regulation framework as a foundation for developing its own competition law. The fundamental aspects of India's competition law are outstanding.

The decrees are written in such a way that they recognise the essential for organisations to determine once a certain kind of behaviour is likely to have negative consequences for market performance and when it is improbable to have those consequences. In numerous key areas, the essential features of India's competition law framework outperform their American counterparts. To begin with, the Competition Commison of India (“the CCI”), unlike the Federal Trade Commission (“the FTC”) and the Department of Justice (“the DOJ”), has the authority to establish meaningful rules to implement the Competition Act (“the CA”). [2]

Second, India has done so by granting exclusive jurisdiction to institutions with the necessary knowledge and by refusing to enable confidential events to bring competition law cases. Unlike the United States, India has evaded the jeopardy of unlawful models being set by private parties by litigating bags beforehand before overall authority courts.

Third, when used judiciously, this allows the Commission to develop processes that are sufficient for the work while avoiding the interminable delays that beset the FTC's and US courts' decision-making processes. Two judgements given by the Indian Supreme Court set key ground rules for the Indian Competition Commission. [3]

India may end the method of establishing an exceptional competition law system by following a few key steps. First and foremost, India must pay close attention to the proper staffing of its institutions. When the US added many economic experts to the FTC Office of Contest and the DOJ Antimonopoly Department, it dramatically strengthened its competition law regime.

Second, India's competition law system could benefit from adopting an approach that acknowledges that paper ranges are at smallest as decent as spoken evidentiary ranges for addressing the common issues that rise in competition rule procedures. Thirdly, India can get it to excellent work of the CCI's rule-making authority by publishing rules that define how it decides whether a certain kind of behaviour is in violation of the CA. The FTC/DOJ unification rules are an excellent example of the types of regulations and standards that can be quite useful in ensuring that all representatives of the community are aware of what the CCI is doing. [4]

We need sectoral officials as well as competition rule prosecution agencies in India, which raises severe concerns about how cross over-sectoral problems are handled. For example, an endeavour may be controlled by one organization for one component and by CCI for another. Businesses are concerned that there may be conflicting directives from different regulators in such cases. They also fear that having to comply with two sets of regulations will increase their operating costs. There is no mechanism in place in India for coordinating sectoral rules with the Competition Commission of India. In the United Kingdom, however, several sectoral supervisors have the power to enforce the Competition Act alongside the Office of Fair Trading (“the OFT”). The Competition Act 1998 (Concurrency) Regulations 2000 were created to coordinate the use of simultaneous rules and the processes that must be observed. In the United Kingdom, for example, there is a consensus gathering when all officials and the contest agency meet to select which agency should handle the matter.

Fourth, India must believe revising the CA to empower the Competition Appellate Tribunal (“the COMPAT”) to pay triple compensations to exclusive events harmed by CA damages as assessed by the CCI. The triple injury treatment in US competition regulation is a potent disincentive for companies that are inclined to break the rules.

Conclusion

As Michaels points out, comparative law "describes the comparison of various laws; it is not a distinct body of law."

In recent years, abuse of power has become a hot topic. It is stated to happen once a consortium of businesses, or a separate corporation takes advantage of its predominant status in the relevant marketplace. As a result, the notion of violence of domination was added into the Competition Act of 2002 in order to make the market fairer. Misuse of a predominant stance is particularly addressed in Section 4 of the act. It's also seen as a global phenomenon, with examples found in practically every industrialised and developing country. To prevent and enforce the abuse of dominating position, each nation has its personal collection of norms and laws. As a result, in the competitive market, it is vital to put an end to this unjust conduct. This project will aid in the comprehension of the differences between the rules governing the abuse of power in two different countries.