As large technology companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta increase consolidation in digital markets on a global scale, many countries are struggling with the limitations of current antitrust law and coordination problems arising from international differences in regulating digital markets. In response, over seventeen governments have released reports analyzing modern antitrust laws and their ability to respond to the harm consumers face resulting from consolidation in digital markets, and at least four have passed legislation specifically regulating digital markets. This Comment compares antitrust laws, regulation, and litigation in the United States and the United Kingdom, using the litigation between Epic Games, Inc. and Apple, Inc. regarding monopolization in the app transaction market as a case study. The juxtaposition of these legal systems shows how US antitrust law has entrenched the use of specific economic tools that focus almost exclusively on price effects into legal tests such that large technology companies that cause non-price harm are able to sidestep antitrust scrutiny. This Comment concludes that the US antitrust law and litigation is illequipped to justly regulate the consolidation of large technology companies in digital markets and should follow the UK’s example in creating specialized regulatory agencies and laws geared toward digital markets, as well as expand the type of economic evidence considered when assessing consumer harm in antitrust claims in US litigation.
