Document Type
Note
Abstract
Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act prohibits “unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce.” While Congress intended Section 5 to play a vital role in the development of competition policy, courts have struggled in applying this vague and ambiguous language, resulting in case- law that lacks certainty and is inconsistently enforced. These difficulties are further highlighted in the context of unfair competition and data privacy.
Data, the currency that our digital world trades in, is largely collected by a small group of companies, Google, Meta, and Amazon. Concerns over how this data is collected and used have existed for decades and the intersection of competition law and data privacy law continue to grow. Businesses, large and small, benefit from the data these big data giants collect but at what cost? The United States lacks federal law that elaborates on what unfair competition is in the context of data privacy. Should big data companies, in the interest of data privacy, be prohibited from sharing the data they collect at the expense of competition? By first examining approaches taken by other legal systems and then by looking at cases from other jurisdictions, this article proposes that the United States should take a more proactive role in finding the balance between these two slightly opposing areas
Recommended Citation
Yekaterina Ko,
Unfair Competition: Big Data and the Fight Over Data Privacy,
52
Ga. J. Int’l & Compar. L.
223
(2024).
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/gjicl/vol52/iss1/6