Does Proposed Anti-Monopoly Investigation against the Merger of Didi and Kuaidi Affect Innovation?

(By You Yunting) China’s two largest Taxi apps Didi Dache (“Didi”) and Kuaidi Dache (“Kuaidi”) confirmed merger on the Western Valentine’s Day, triggering the whole industry, which also lead to the suspicion of a monopoly. Afterwards, the Taxi apps Didi and Kuaidi responded this with much larger travel markets, and told that their merger does not lead to a monopoly, because mobile taxis only count a small proportion with lots of participators. As for whether their merger is accused of monopoly, there are hot discussions among legal professions. At present, third parties were tending to make anti-monopoly investigation from the Ministry of Commerce, and I am no exception. But after full consideration, I fell into confusion.

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360 vs Tencent: The Summary of Anti-Monopoly Court Hearing

On 18th April, 2012, Guangdong Higher People’s Court heard the case of monopolized status dispute filed by Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU) against Tencent (HKEX: 700), with the claim of 150 million yuan. For the background information of the case, please refer to Wiki and a letter from Zhou Hongyi, the CEO of Qihoo 360 to his employees.

The information disclosed from the indictment of Qihoo 360:

I. The request of Qihoo 360

Demanding Tencent to cease the infringement of abusing its market monopoly status, including but not limited to cease the limitation on the transaction between QQ user and Qihoo 360, selling the safeguard software in QQ; demanding the joint compensation by the defendants to the losses of RMB 150 million yuan and the apology to Qihoo 360, also the expenses of reasonable costs and lawsuit fee paid by Qihoo 360 shall also be borne by Tencent.

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