New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday declined to entertain Google LLC’s plea seeking modification of its January 19 order and said the company can raise its grievances during the hearing of its appeal before the NCLAT.
A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala said it can add “without prejudice” to the January 19 order and nothing more.
Senior advocate Maninder Singh, appearing for the US tech giant, said that certain portions of the January 19 order needed to be struck down.
The bench said that the order was recorded in open court and hence there is nothing to clarify or modify.
Counsel appearing for Competition Commission India (CCI) said that the appeal of Google LLC is listed for hearing before the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) next week and they may raise these issues before the tribunal.
“Sorry, this cannot be done. We will not do that. You can raise all these grievances during the hearing of the appeal,” the bench told Singh.
On January 19, in a setback to Google, the apex court had upheld the NCLAT order granting an interim stay on the imposition of Rs 1,337 crore fine on the US tech giant by the competition regulator for allegedly abusing its dominance. was refused. Position in the Android mobile device ecosystem.
The top court had said that at the interlocutory stage, it would be sufficient to say that the CCI’s findings against Google were neither outside jurisdiction nor suffered from any manifest error necessitating its intervention.
It had given the US firm a week’s time to deposit 10 per cent of the Rs 1,337 crore fine imposed on it by the CCI.
The apex court had asked the NCLAT to decide by March 31 this year after fixing the date for hearing Google’s appeal against the order of the competition regulator.
“It is sufficient to note that the findings arrived at by the CCI, at the negotiation stage, cannot be held to be either without jurisdiction or to suffer from a manifest error, which warrants intervention at the negotiation stage. will be required”, it was ordered.
Google had earlier moved the top court against the NCLAT’s January 4 order refusing to grant an interim stay on imposition of Rs 1,337 crore fine on the competition regulator.
The NCLAT, however, accepted the search giant’s challenge to the penalty imposed by the CCI for misusing the dominant position of its Android smartphone operating system in the country and ordered the listing of its plea in April.
The US-headquartered firm had said without prejudice during the hearing that it was ready to partially comply with the CCI order.
“These may be followed to the following extent – a. Google shall ensure separation of Chrome from Search, Chrome from Play only; In terms of the decision of the EC (European Commission) dated 18th July 2018, Google shall ensure that The top court had said that search app pre-installation exclusivity on portfolio-wise RSA alone would not be followed.
It was noted that the NCLAT had listed the appeal for final hearing and therefore did not hear the matter on merits.
Earlier, the CCI had said that the issue relating to alleged abuse of dominant position by Google in multiple markets in the Android mobile device ecosystem is of “national importance” and the world is watching how India is dealing with the matter.
The CCI had on October 20 last year asked Google to allow smartphone users on the Android platform to uninstall applications and let them choose the search engine of their choice.
This order was to be effective from January 19.
On October 20 last year, the CCI had ordered the internet major to cease and desist various unfair business practices apart from imposing a hefty penalty on Google.
The regulator, which passed the order after directing a detailed probe more than three years ago, has also asked Google to modify its conduct within a specified time frame.
The CCI, which began probing the matter in April 2019, directed that original equipment manufacturers should not be prevented from choosing to pre-install applications owned by Google and that they should be allowed to install the bouquet of applications on their devices. Don’t be forced to pre-install. smart device. PTI MNL RHL
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)