CCI dismisses complaint against Symantec Corp

Fair trade regulator CCI has rejected allegations of anti-competitive business practices made against anti-virus software maker Symantec Corp. Dismissing the complaint, CCI said there is no "prima facie" evidence of violation of competition norms. Symantec is the maker of Norton anti-virus software.

The complaint was filed by one Shrishail Rana, who is into designing optimisation software for computers. It was alleged that Symantec falsely categorised and displayed the complainant's product as "unwanted or malicious or dangerous or misleading application or Potentially Unwanted Application (PUA) on their website, inside their security software product and/ or on various internet sites". Such a move has hurt business by preventing the potential customers from installing and using the product offered by the informant.

For this case, Competition Commission of India (CCI) considered 'market for development and sale of computer security (anti-virus) software in India' as a relevant market. According to CCI, the global market share of Symantec in windows anti-virus application is very less as compared to the four other competitors - Avast, Microsoft, AVG and Avira. "In the absence of dominance of the opposite party in the relevant market, it is not required to look into its alleged abusive conduct under the provisions of section 4 of the Act," CCI said in an order dated November 17.

Section 4 pertains to abuse of dominant position. Another allegation was that by entering into anti- competitive agreement, Symantec caused appreciable adverse effect on competition in the market. After examining the licensing agreement for security (anti-virus) between customer or computer system user and the opposite party, the Commission said such an agreement with end consumer is not envisaged under section 3 of the Act.

Section 3 relates to cartelisation. "The allegation appears to be misconceived devoid of any merit. Based on the above, prima facie, violation of the provisions section 3 of the Act is ruled out in this case," the order said.