The Italian Competition Authority opens an Article 102 TFEU investigation against a provider of IT services to the public administration

The Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has opened an Article 102 TFEU investigation against Net Services (NS), a provider for IT services for the implementation of the system for the newly introduced on-line civil trial (decision of 11 May 2016, Case A490). Being the awardee of some public contracts, NS had the exclusive for the supply of IT services for the management of the platform required for the working of the on-line civil trial. NS was also an important player in the downstream competitive market for the supply of application software. The ICA focused on the discriminatory conducts carried out by NS against its competitors in the dowstreamt. First, NS failed to give competitors in a timely and complete way all the technical information required to ensure the full interoperability between the NS platform and the competitors’ software. Second, NS made available to competitors a model office different from that it used to develop its own application software. Third, NS installed patches without informing competitors about the problems the patches should dealt with.

The ICA believed that NS may have leveraged its dominant position from the market for the management of the platform for the working of the on-line civil trial, where it was a legal monopolist, to the free market for the supply of application software foreclosing its rivals in this market. Indeed, due to the NS conducts, its rivals might be unable to market efficient alternative application software, with the result that customers would have to purchase the NS products.

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