Technically Tying Applications to a Dominant Platform in the Software Market and Competition Law

Tying coerces consumers and therefore is exclusionary to competitors. In the US Microsoft case, the legal rule for assessing technical tying was the rule of reason, while in the European Union and South Korean cases, the legal rule applied against Microsoft’s parallel practices was the quasi-per se rule. Nevertheless, the application of different legal rules did not lead to different verdicts in these cases, as Microsoft’s technical tying was not allowed to continue in any of the three markets. These verdicts indicate that technically tying applications to a platform in the software market is unanimously forbidden. Since Microsoft’s practice of technically tying applications to its dominant platform was not justified under either the rule of reason or the quasi-per se rule, technically tying applications to a dominant software platform does not seem to be desirable for consumers and thus should be prohibited by competition law. This article aims to verify this conclusion by examining the Microsoft cases in the three markets mentioned above