Significant imbalance: The Paris Commercial Court, seized by the Minister of the Economy, rules that several clauses of the contract binding a famous search engine to application developers for the distribution of applications cause a significant imbalance; it enjoins the search engine to modify the unbalanced clauses and imposes a fine of 2 million euros (Google)

This interesting judgment of the Commercial Court of Paris of March 28, 2022 rules on an action brought by the Minister of the Economy against Google, initiated by a "Novelli summons". On the basis of the prohibition of significant imbalance, the Minister obtained a civil fine of two million euros and an injunction to modify the unbalanced clauses of the distribution contract for the "Google Play" application store between Google and application developers. The case is reminiscent of the Amazon judgment of September 2, 2019 (T. com. Paris, 1st ch., Sept. 2, 2019, Amazon, R. G. 2017050625) which already ruled on the same basis. It confirms that, in addition to the abuse of dominant position litigation with which the Competition Authority is familiar (see Aut. Aut. conc., dec. 19-D-26