The Supreme Court has postponed the hearing of Google’s plea against the INR 1,337.76 Cr penalty for allegedly abusing its dominant position in the Android mobile devices market to January 2024.
As per the SC’s earlier order, the hearing was scheduled to commence this week. As per multiple media reports, the hearing has been postponed due to pending constitution-bench hearings.
Google moved to the SC earlier this year against the order of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) after the latter partially upheld the Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) decision to impose the INR 1,337.76 Cr penalty on the tech giant in 2022.
A bench comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra has on Monday (October 9) assured about hearing the case in the last week of January next year, Bar and Bench reported.
“I will ensure that no other cases are listed then, so that the matter is over in a couple of days,” CJI Chandrachud was quoted by the publication.
We must note that out of the 10 directions that CCI had issued against Google in regard to its anti-competitive practice in the Android market, the NCLAT had held only four of them unsustainable while agreeing on six aspects.
The appellate tribunal had held the tech giant’s precondition of asking the smartphone makers to pre-install the entire Google Suite of 11 applications as unfair. The NCLAT had also agreed with the CCI that the manufacturers must be able to develop Android-forks-based smart devices without the precondition to include Google’s proprietary apps.
On the other hand, the CCI’s direction to Google to not deny original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), app developers and its existing or potential competitors access to its play services Application Programming Interface (APIs) was one of the directions set aside by the NCLAT.
Besides the alleged market dominance in the Android space, Google was also slapped with a fine of INR 936 Cr in a separate case related to its Play Store policies by the CCI last year.
The US-based tech giant had challenged that penalty in the Supreme Court, but the case was withdrawn later. As per the latest development on that case, the NCLAT is expected to start hearing Google’s appeal against the CCI order of the penalty in November.
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