Platforms or online marketplaces such as Amazon also compete directly with their third party sellers. They've referred to them as “internal competitors” in corporate documents. Regulators and decision-makers should be concerned then, perhaps, that Amazon's IP Accelerator, which launched in 2019 and came to Canada last year in 2021, is now here. The program matches third party sellers on its platform with trademark and patent law firms, with which it has negotiated set rates to aid sellers in “protecting their brand”.
Canada has a great opportunity, an opportunity to be informed by recently conducted research that considers competition issues facing SMEs such as price discrimination by dominant players, compliance fines, dominant companies using their influence to forestall policy intervention, and dominant companies using incentives that lock-in smaller businesses to their services. We think that significantly improving competition outcomes in Canada for small and medium-sized businesses for firms of all sizes, demands an all-of-government approach that's recently exemplified by the Biden administration's executive order. We can't and shouldn't rely on the Competition Act alone as a sole instrument here.
In sum, there are invisible, or less visible, competition issues that affect small and medium-sized businesses that must be studied in the Canadian context. Your study should also consider the intersections between competition and intellectual property.