DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION ANTITRUST EXPERT WITNESS CONSULTANT FOR TRIAL TESTIMONY

News flash: Digital distribution antitrust expert witness consultants are suddenly coming to the forefront of legal matters. It makes sense – think about how Internet and mobile retailing for media, software, games and other content has catalyzed a major shift in how products reach consumers. Accordingly, digital distribution antitrust expert witness providers say that the firms controlling these digital channels have gained immense market power… and therefore attracted litigation or regulatory probes. And thus the following concerns tend to pop up that pros analyze.

1. Internet retail and mobile online shopping – Contemplating things like potential demand substitutability between digital and physical distribution channels across different content verticals like video, music, books, etc.
2. How competitive any given space is – Do companies benefit from more providers and suppliers as well as customers? A pro might model whether these effects reinforce durable incumbency advantages.
3. Restricted access to technology and technical bottlenecks – There are claims that dominant providers impose intentional technical hurdles, standards fragmentation or outright interoperability blockades aimed at inhibiting rivals’ ability to interface with devices and consumers.
4. From bundling to tying – Whether certain mandatory bundling requirements, pre-installation policies or proprietary payment systems amount to illegal tying of separate products, restricting consumer choice. You’ll often hear digital distribution antitrust expert witness leaders weigh in.
5. Selective enforcement and discrimination – Plaintiffs frequently allege that mobil and online stores enforce policies like content moderation, search rankings or fee structures in a discriminatory manner disadvantaging rivals and favoring their own vertically integrated products.
6. Exclusion through the use of information – With their ability to harvest extensive user data trails, there are concerns that companies unfairly leverage these datasets as competitive assets to perpetuate dominance across multiple digital markets.
7. Distribution mergers and vertical integration – A digital distribution antitrust expert witness scrutinizes whether merger deals involving content producers integrating with digital distribution channels may substantially lessen competition through foreclosure incentives or diminished differentiation between rivals’ offerings.

As online shopping represents a growing share of media and software revenue streams, the policies and technical control wielded by providers raise multi-faceted issues. To wit, digital distribution antitrust expert witness testimony helps with examining the competitive effects on upstream content producers and downstream consumer pricing and choice.