Comments
The Chief Justice of Madras High Court Sanjay V Gangapurwala on Monday refused urgent listing of the appeal filed by fourteen Startups against a Single judge ruling which declined to interfere with the User Choice Billing (UCB) policy notified by Google for App developers.
The matter is now likely to come up on Friday for admission and hearing on stay application, sources said.
It maybe recalled that Single judge Justice Sounthar of Madras High Court had last week dismissed the suits of 14 domestic start-ups including Bharat Matrimony, Shaadi.com, Kutumb, Unacademy, FRND, Pratilipi and Vikatan among others.
Justice Sounthar held in a 96-page order that the matter does not fall within a Civil Court purview and therefore redirected the plea challenging Google Play billing policy to the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
He had observed that the Competition Act 2002 was enacted as a special law to deal with the abuse of dominant position by enterprises and that special law will prevail over the general law. Also Section 61 of Competition Act 2002 expressly barred the jurisdiction of a civil court on matters that fell within CCI’s jurisdiction, it was pointed out.
STORY SOFAR
CCI had on October 25 last year passed an order in Google Play billing policy case where Google was directed to allow third party billing system other than Google Play Billing System (GPBS).
Domestic start-ups lauded the CCI’s move, since Google then charged a 30 percent commission for its billing system, whereas the then prevailing market rate was around 2 percent to 5 percent.
Tech giant Google had post CCI’s order of October 25 last year expanded in January this year its User Choice Billing (UCB) policy to all developers in India and updated its UCB policy that went into effect from April 26. However the service fee charged was as high as 26% (just 4 percentage points drop).
Startups had moved CCI stating that Google is not complying with its October 25 order in true spirit.
Meanwhile, Google issued notices to start-ups to either accept UCB or else they will be delisted. Madras HC had earlier issued injunction order stating that Google cannot delist them. But now all the pleas of 14 start-ups (filed between April and June 2023) stand dismissed by a single judge ruling.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.