Amex 판결의 경쟁법적 쟁점에 관한 연구 - 직접적 효과 테스트와 거래플랫폼에서의 관련시장 획정을 중심으로 -

초록

American Express Decision(“Amex Decision”) of 2018 by U.S. Supreme Court has attracted many attentions from domestic and abroad legal experts. This Decision is the first case to put forth the opinions of the Court explicitly about what the legal principles applied to a two-sided platform should be. The 5-4 Decision was unexpected result among many experts. First, this article seeks to analyze the application and its scope of the direct effect test, which did not draw many attentions from legal experts in South Korea. U.S. courts recognize that plaintiffs can prove anticompetitive harm directly using evidence of increased prices or reduced output without the definition of relevant market or proof of monopoly power. However, the Court held that the definition of relevant market and the proof of monopoly power could not be avoided to assess the competitive harm in vertical restraints like Amex case. Second, this article seeks to analyze and evaluate the logics of Amex Decision about the definition of relevant market in a case involving a two-sided platform. Amex majority classifies a two-sided platform into a transaction platform, which requires simultaneous agreement from both sides of platform for making a deal, and a non-transaction platform. According to Amex Decision, only a single relevant market should be defined in the former for the antitrust purposes. This article proposes that the debate on the introduction of the direct effect test into Korea competition law should be required among legal experts, given the difficulties and uncertainties in defining the relevant market. And The definition of relevant market based on the classification of platforms needs to form more consensus through verification into the theory.

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