Financial Services and Telecommunications Companies Are Now Out of Scope Since then, many lawmakers have voiced concerns regarding the bill’s vagueness and its potential impact on the targeted U.S. In January, the bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee with a 16 to 6 vote. The AICOA was first introduced in October 2021 by Senator Amy Klobuchar, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Committee, and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to early, bi-partisan support from the Senate as well as the Justice Department. The bill prohibits a range of specific acts such as: (1) restricting or impeding the same level of access or interoperability with the platform, operating system, hardware and software features available to the covered platform (2) conditioning access to the platform on the purchase or use of other products or services (3) using platform-generated data to support the covered platform’s own products or services (4) restricting business users’ access to or use of platform-generated data (5) restricting the uninstallation of applications, changes to default settings or steering users to the covered platform operator’s products or services (6) restricting business users from communicating with users to facilitate business transactions (7) treating the platform operator’s products and services more favorably in connection with any user interface (8) interfering with a business user’s pricing of its goods or services (9) restricting users from interoperating or connecting to any product or service and (10) retaliating against complainants. net sales exceeding $550 billion and (3) that serve as a “critical trading partner” for its business users. The bill defines “covered platforms” as those: (1) with at least 50 million monthly active users (or 100,000 business users) (2) having annual market capitalization or U.S. The AICOA, similar to that of its House counterpart the American Choice and Innovation Online Act, prohibits “covered platforms” from engaging in a range of self-preferential conduct, including preferencing a covered platform’s products over other branded products while consumers are shopping on the platform. Additionally, the revision now creates an exception to the bill’s technical interoperability requirements “where such access would lead to significant cybersecurity risk.” Although critics complain the revisions do not go far enough to address the bill’s shortcomings, Senator Klobuchar and other bi-partisan supporters are pushing for a Senate floor vote this summer. The revised bill now carves out telecommunications providers and financial service companies from the bill’s prohibitions, and reduces potential penalties for violations. On May 25, 2022, following markup in the Judiciary Committee, Senator Amy Klobuchar introduced an amended version of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (“AICOA”), an antitrust bill we previously reported on that aims to curtail self-preferential conduct by certain online platforms.
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