Regulatory developments affecting digital markets in Japan

The Digital Market Competition Convention (“Competition Convention”) and its associated working groups were established to facilitate competition and innovation in line with rapid changes in digital markets globally. In order to effectively implement competition policy in this area, the Japanese government has begun discussing digital market regulation. In this alert, we discuss the latest movements surrounding digital platformers, including a direction of a bill that would require greater transparency in transactions involving operators of digital platforms (tentatively named the Digital Platformer Transaction Transparency Bill) disclosed during the Competition Convention meeting held on 17 December 2019.