Today, the
FTC announced the closure of its 19-month antitrust investigation of Google.
The
following statement can be attributed to Ed Black, President & CEO of the
Computer & Communications Industry Association:
“The FTC’s decision not to proceed with a search case against Google was the
right call. Over the course of its far-reaching 19-month investigation,
the FTC thoroughly reviewed the facts and the applicable law and made its
decision accordingly. This is exactly how law enforcement is supposed to
work. This was a prudent decision by the FTC that shows that antitrust
enforcement, in the hands of responsible regulators, is sufficiently adaptable
to the realities of the Internet age.
“As this investigation illustrates,
the market for answering consumers’ questions is dynamic and changing rapidly.
Traditional search engines are just one part of this expanding ecosystem.
Locking Google or any company into a 1998 version of web search would
have harmed users and sent the wrong signal to companies looking to evolve
their business models to effectively compete in the rapidly evolving Internet
marketplace.
“Despite my support for this outcome,
I am concerned about Google’s voluntary commitment on its display of
‘snippets’, which potentially sends the wrong message on fair use.
Displaying ‘snippets’ of information from other sources, whether they be
newspapers or websites, is beneficial to consumers, widely accepted as
appropriate, and protected under copyright law. In fact a balanced
copyright system, including fair use, is one of the key reasons why products
like search engines, YouTube, Facebook, and thousands of other Internet
companies are commercially viable in the first place. The Internet as we
know it today would not be possible without robust fair use protections for transformative
copying.
“I understand why Google, which has
been offering websites an opt-out provision for some time now, was willing to
offer additional opt-outs for its specialized results pages, but we do not
believe the company was under any legal obligation to do so. Other
companies should not interpret this agreement as diminishing their fair use
rights in any way.”
In response to the binding components
of the Google-FTC settlement pertaining to standard essential patents, the
following is a statement by Ed Black:
“CCIA has long expressed concern with
how the patent system operates. A limited set of incentives intended to
encourage invention has morphed into a system that too frequently impedes
innovation, particularly in high-tech markets. The settlement with Google
on standard essential patents attempts to address one of the grey areas of
patent policy and we will monitor it closely. Given that SEP issues are
minor compared to the major abuse that goes on elsewhere in the patent system,
we hope that the FTC does not stop here. The agency’s historical expertise in
this area gives it both the resources and the cachet to inject competition
concerns into the greater debate around patent reform.”
