Voluntary sharing of intangible assets in ICT markets: a new challenge for regulators

ICT regulators need to tackle a phenomenon of sharing intangible assets by companies in a dominant market position. It requires a new approach, a synthesis of two contradicting trends: top-down extortion by the state, targeted primarily to the companies with significant market power (essential facility), as well as bottom-up voluntary sharing of the assets (long term strategy of standard recognition and related network effect).

Top-down state regulations

State regulations are directed primarily to the companies with significant market power. These firms need to share its information and knowledge in situations where their absence makes it difficult or impossible for  other companies to conduct their business (essential facility). The business world has seen many attempts to force companies to share their confidential know-how.

Let's take for example a case IBM vs. Compaq, Digital and Intergraph who wanted IBM to share with them its know-how. The court ruled that cooperation should not interfere with intellectual and industrial property that IBM has developed on its own and which led to leading position in this field. However, this view has subsequently evolved towards wider desirability and acceptability on forced sharing of confidential knowledge (such as Microsoft sharing its proprietary source-code).