BC Law Workshop

Competition Law: Regulating Tech Platforms & Data Roundtable Workshop

Trinity College Dublin & Boston College Law School 

Date: April 18-19, 2024

Locations: Neil Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin
Boston College Ireland, 43 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2

Organizers:
Prof. David Olson, BC Law School
Prof. Judith McMorrow, BC Law School,
Dervla Broderick, Counsel, Ropes & Gray

This workshop will gather academics, regulators, industry participants, and lawyers from the U.S., Ireland, the UK, and the EU to discuss competition issues around Tech platforms. The workshop will focus on potential competition law issues including platform design and policies, market definition, switching costs, consumer harm/benefit, preferencing a platforms’ own products, platforms’ competition with users of their platforms, and “walled garden” approaches. Participants will discuss whether current competition law tools are sufficient, or if reforms are needed because “digital is different” or “platforms are peculiar.” The workshop will examine recent laws, proposals, and developments in the U.S., EU, UK, and Ireland, including privacy/data security concerns and copyright/IP issues around data.