Amicus Brief: State of New York et al. v. Facebook, Inc.
N.Y. v. Facebook deals with Facebook’s scheme to suppress competition in the personal social networking market. Facebook limited the ability of other social networks to attract users by making it harder for them to work with application developers. The district court dismissed the case, ruling there was not an antitrust violation because Facebook did not expressly prohibit application developers from working with rival social networks. However, the reality of Facebook’s restraints still blocked application developers from doing so. Dismissing the case before discovery allowed Facebook to get away with anticompetitive actions without considering the practical effects of their policy. When reviewing these claims, COSAL said the court erred in the standards that it applied. For one, they applied the total foreclosure standard, saying Facebook could close some rival social networks, as long as they left some in the market. However, not all options need to be removed from the market to be considered anticompetitive. Furthermore, the court relied on the doctrine of laches, instead of considering that Facebook’s exclusion of competitors from its platform had continual effects. Consequently, COSAL pursued the reversal of the court’s dismissal. David Weinstein and Deborah Elman wrote this brief.
