Amazon just won a partial victory against the FTC

• Amazon wins partial dismissal of FTC lawsuit alleging illegal monopoly practices.
• The FTC accused Amazon of stifling competition by forcing sellers to use its services.
• The ruling is part of broader government scrutiny of Big Tech under the Biden administration.

Amazon just won a partial dismissal of a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit accusing it of operating an illegal monopoly.

In September 2023, the FTC sued Amazon for stifling competition by penalizing vendors who sell their products cheaper on competing platforms and for forcing sellers to use Amazon’s own order fulfillment service. Competition guardian started researching Amazon in 2019 over your business practices.

On Monday, a federal judge in Seattle partially granted Amazon’s earlier request to dismiss the case, Reuters reported, citing court records. In December, the e-commerce giant asked a judge to dismiss the case. At the time, Amazon said its practices were standard for all retailers and the FTC found no harm to consumers.

However, according to Reuters, the FTC may still pursue claims that the judge did not dismiss.

The FTC and Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment made outside regular business hours.

The lawsuit is one of several FTC investigations into Amazon in recent years as the federal government takes a tougher stance against Big Tech companies including Amazon, Meta, Google and Nvidia.

Last year, the agency sued Amazon in another case, saying it lured unsuspecting customers Main subscriptions and created a “labyrinthine” process for canceling them. The company “knowingly defrauded millions of consumers,” the FTC said in your complaint, filed in federal court in Washington State.

FTC too test the company’s use of Signalan encrypted messaging app and how its management used the disappearing message feature may have destroyed information relevant to the agency’s investigation.

Big Tech Dissertation

The partial waiver comes after a wave of lawsuits filed by the U.S. government against Big Tech. Under Biden, the FTC is scrutinizing contracts more closely and pushing for more aggressive competition policy.

Related stories

In August, a federal judge described Google as a monopoly and said Alphabet’s deals to make Google the default search engine on other platforms violated antitrust laws, generating billions of dollars in revenue. The Department of Justice is currently considering whether to pursue a division of the company, Bloomberg reported in August.

That same month, the agency investigated Nvidia’s acquisition of an Israeli artificial intelligence startup called Run:ai and how the chipmaker pressured cloud service providers to buy multiple products.

Earlier this year, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit Apple in an antitrust lawsuit, saying the company illegally maintained a monopoly on smartphones, “delaying, degrading or outright blocking” other technologies on the market.

In 2022, the FTC repeatedly tried to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a leading video game company. The agency said the $69 billion deal would stifle competition in the gaming industry.

A similar request was recently submitted by the US government lawsuits against Tesla AND Meta.