The Supreme Court on Friday refused to interfere with the probe ordered by CCI against WhatsApp and Meta for competition law violations and dismissed the special leave petitions preferred by the tech giants against the Delhi High Court order upholding a CCI order directing a probe.
While dismissing the appeals, the Supreme Court observed that proceedings before the CCI have to be completed expeditiously.
Earlier this month WhatsApp and Meta approached the Supreme Court challenging the decision of a division bench of the Delhi High Court passed on August 25 this year.
The Delhi High Court had dismissed their plea to restrain the Competition Commission of India (CCI) from proceeding with its examination of the privacy policy update announced by WhatsApp in 2021.
Interim stay sought
In the appeal, WhatsApp and Meta had contended that the order of the Delhi High Court improperly allowed CCI to conduct an investigation into and issue an order on factual and legal questions already pending before the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court.
The digital platforms alleged that rather than exercising the “requisite restraint”, CCI initiated the investigation to answer many of the same factual and legal questions that the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court would be deciding – questions that form the basis of the CCI order.
In the appeal, WhatsApp and Meta had sought stay on the operation of the final order and judgement of the Delhi Court pronounced on August 25, until the disposal of the Special Leave Petition. They also sought a stay on the CCI’s March 24 order that directed an investigation, sources added.
Proceedings before CCI
Earlier, in January 2021, WhatsApp announced a privacy policy and terms of service updates. Users had to mandatorily accept the new terms and policy in their entirety, including those concerning expanded data collection and sharing with other Facebook companies.
Under the previous privacy policy dated August 25, 2016, users could choose whether or not they wanted to share their WhatsApp data with Facebook.
In March 2021, the CCI passed an order forming a prima facie opinion of the violation of Section 4 of the Competition Act, and directed an investigation.