According to a report from Nikkei, Japan’s antitrust regulator will craft rules for cross-sector partnerships in high-tech fields like automated driving and connected devices, seeking to prevent monopolies on big data and intellectual property.
In planning conferences starting in December, the Japan Fair Trade Commission’s (JFTC) Competition Policy Research Center aims to clarify at what point inter-industry data sharing crosses the line into illegality. It aims to reach a conclusion as soon as the summer, with the JFTC expected to use the rules as the basis for new guidelines on antitrust law.
Having a clear set of rules is expected to prevent reorganizations by Japanese businesses from being hobbled, at a time when US information technology giants like Google and Amazon are enlarging themselves even further through cross-sector partnerships.
