New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday declined to hear Google LLC’s plea to amend its Jan. 19 order, saying the company can address its grievances while hearing its appeal before the NCLAT.
A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala said at most it can add “without prejudice” to the January 19 order and nothing more.
Appearing before the US tech giant, senior advocate Maninder Singh said part of the January 19 order should be removed.
The court said the order was dictated in open court and therefore there is nothing to clarify or change.
Counsel appearing before the Competition Commission of India (CCI) said Google LLC’s appeal will be heard by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) next week and they can raise these issues before the tribunal.
The bench told Singh, “Sorry, we can’t. We won’t. You can raise all these grievances during the hearing of the appeal”.
On January 19, in a setback for Google, the top court had upheld the order of the NCLAT to refuse to grant an interim stay on the imposition of a Rs 1,337 crore fine on the US tech giant by the competition regulator for allegedly abuse of his dominant position. position in the ecosystem of Android mobile devices.
The Supreme Court had said in its interlocutory judgment that it would suffice to say that the CCI’s findings against Google were neither without jurisdiction nor affected by any manifest error justifying its interference.
It had given the US company one week to pay 10 percent of the Rs 1,337 crore fine imposed by the CCI.
The Supreme Court had asked NCLAT to rule on Google’s appeal against the competition regulator’s order by March 31 this year, after charting the timetable for the hearing.
Suffice it to note that the findings reached by the CCI cannot be considered in the interim stage as unauthorized or manifestly erroneous which would have required interference in the interim stage. ordered.
Google had previously challenged the top court against the January 4 NCLAT order denying an interim suspension of the competition regulator and imposing a fine of Rs 1,337 crore on it.
However, the NCLAT had admitted that the search giant had challenged the CCI to impose the fine for abusing the dominant position of its Android smartphone operating system in the country and had ordered its plea to be listed in April.
The US-headquartered company had said unreservedly at the hearing that it was willing to partially comply with the CCI’s order.
These can be tracked to the following extent – A. Google would unbundle search-only and chrome from Play, chrome from search; In terms of the EC (European Commission) decision of 18 July 2018, Google would ensure that the search app pre-install exclusivity only on wallet-wise RSAs would not be pursued,” the top court had said.
It had noted that NCLAT had listed the appeal for a final hearing and therefore did not deal with the substance of the matter.
Earlier, the CCI had said that the issue regarding Google’s alleged abuse of dominant position in multiple markets in the Android mobile device ecosystem is of “national concern” and that the world is watching how India handles the matter.
The CCI had asked Google on October 20 last year to allow smartphone users on the Android platform to uninstall applications and select a search engine of their choice.
That order would take effect on January 19.
On October 20 last year, the CCI not only imposed the sky-high fine on Google, but also ordered the internet major to stop various unfair business practices.
The regulator, which issued the order after conducting a detailed investigation more than three years ago, also asked Google to modify its behavior within a specified timeline.
The CCI, which began investigating the matter in April 2019, ruled that Original Equipment Manufacturers should not be prevented from choosing from Google’s proprietary applications to be pre-installed, nor should they be forced to pre-install a set of applications. install on their smart devices. PTI MNL RHL
Read all the latest technical news here
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and was published from a syndicated news agency feed)
