Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing time on March 15 morning news, According to reports, Meta was previously due to the merger of two social tools by the federal government antitrust litigation, In order to fight back, Meta hopes eBay executives to provide evidence and information in their favor. US e-commerce giant eBay has filed an application in court to stop Meta from using competitors to obtain evidence beyond its scope.

Meta wanted an eBay executive to provide evidentiary information, but eBay's lawyers filed documents in a federal district court in San Francisco, California, saying Meta wanted access to the company's personal privacy policy, data retention policy and other information, which was a request for trade secrets and was unrelated to the FTC's antitrust lawsuit against Meta.

In 2020, the FTC launched an antitrust lawsuit against Meta, accusing it of "abusing" dominant influence in the market for personal Social networks services by acquiring mobile social tools Instagram and WhatsApp. The FTC asked the court to let Meta sell the two social platforms.

As a response to this antitrust lawsuit, which could go to trial in 2024, Meta is now looking for evidence in its favor from companies in the tech and social media sectors and obtaining it legally through court subpoenas.

However, some technology companies objected to Meta's move, arguing that the information and evidence requested were too broad and even suspected of infringing on trade secrets.

Last year, Meta issued a subpoena to Sequoia Capital, a well-known US venture capital firm, asking the other party to provide relevant evidence, especially Sequoia Capital's analysis and evaluation of Instagram and WhatsApp before Meta acquired two major social tools. Sequoia objected to Meta's subpoena, but the court ruled Sequoia could not deny Meta's request for evidence.

eBay's lawyers told the court that Meta's evidentiary request was greedy and that the scope of the subpoena was surprising, adding a huge workload to other companies.

A Meta spokesman said the company was seeking information and evidence from a number of related companies, mainly companies competing with Meta and companies involved in FTC antitrust litigation.

Meta objected to the FTC's lawsuit and allegations. The company raised several objections, including one challenging the FTC's stated definition of the "personal Social networks services" market.

eBay lawyers said Meta, as a party to the antitrust lawsuit, did not consider the boundaries of "reasonableness and appropriateness" in seeking evidence and information from third-party companies.

eBay, its legal team and the FTC had no comment for this report.

eBay's lawyers say eBay is not Meta's competitor in the Social networks marketplace, but there is some competition between the two sides on Facebook's e-commerce online store.

eBay says it has cumulatively provided about 2500 pages of internal documents in response to Meta's evidentiary subpoena request.

However, the company said Meta did not clearly prove that the information requested was necessary and relevant to the FTC antitrust lawsuit, so eBay did not want to be forced to hand over more confidential trade information next.

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