Fidibo prohibited from restricting publishers from cooperating with other platforms

Fidibo should remove the so-called anti-competitive clause from the contract with the publishers

In line with Taaghche and Ketabrah’s complaint, the Competition Council required Fidibo to stop the anti-competitive practice and this platform must remove the exclusivity clause in its contracts with publishers.

According to the Iran digital economy annotation, based on the complaints of Taaghche (Talaee Hatef Intelligent Service Company) and Ketabrah (Electronic Publishing Development Institute), Fidibo (Firoozan Electronic Book Creation Company) acted to force the publishers of the contract with them to Restricting them to deal with other publishers and competitors was recognized as an anti-competitive practice.

Based on this, the Competition Council considered the inclusion of the clause “prohibition of publishers of the contracting party from entering into contracts with other digital platforms” in Fidibo’s contracts with publishers as being in accordance with the anti-competitive procedure of Article (45) Part 2 Clause A. This article is about “forcing other persons to refrain from trading or restricting their transactions with competitors” and in this regard, Fidibo was condemned by the Competition Council for committing an anti-competitive practice.

Referring to paragraph 3, article 61, chapter 9, article 44 of the constitution, Fidibo was required to stop the anti-competitive practice and prohibited from repeating the anti-competitive practice by “removing the exclusive clause on the subject of complaints in its contracts with publishers”.

It should be noted that Fidibo is the largest platform for publishing and selling electronic books, audio books, magazines and podcasts. This collection started its activity from the last days of 2012 and has been providing users with electronic and audio versions of books, magazines and publications for nearly a decade.