Open Source and Merger Policy: Insights from the EU Oracle/Sun Decision

Simonetta Vezzoso (this blog's author), here. International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law (IIC), Forthcoming.

Abstract:

In Europe the merger between Oracle and Sun raised a series of substantial competition concerns, especially related to the acquisition by Oracle of MySQL, an open source business, and its impact on the database market. In the end, the acquisition was unconditionally cleared by the Commission. The open source nature of MySQL played a decisive role in the competition assessment of the merger conducted by the European competition authority according to the "significant impediment to effective competition" legal test. In this Article we will review the Commission’s decision with the specific aim of determining to what extent the open source nature of MySQL’s business model actually affected the scrutiny of Sun’s acquisition by Oracle under the relevant test. In particular, it will be questioned whether Oracle’s public announcement concerning its future behaviour on the database and related markets can be expected to duly address the concerns voiced by the Commission in the course of the merger proceedings. We will conclude that Judge Easterbrook’s much quoted conclusion that «[t]he GPL and open-source software have nothing to fear from the antitrust laws» may possibly need some qualification.


Content:

I. Introduction
II. The EU Oracle/Sun Merger Decision
1. The legal background
2. The SIEC test in the context of the Oracle/Sun case
3. The SIEC test and MySQL’s open source nature
III. The competition assessment of open source in the context of merger policy: in search of a
balanced approach
IV. Conclusion