German court suspends cartel office ruling on Facebook

BERLIN: Facebook scored an interim victory when a German court Monday temporarily suspended restrictions the national competition watchdog had placed on the social network's data collection practices.

The Federal Competition Office (FCO) immediately said it would appeal the ruling by the Duesseldorf regional court before the Federal Court of Justice.

The FCO had found in February that Facebook abused its dominant market position to gather information about users for their advertising business.

It ruled that users should be asked for consent before data collected by the group's subsidiaries Whatsapp and Instagram and on third-party websites was combined with their social network account.

The body also ruled that Facebook could not shut out users who refused, and gave the US company four months to present a "concept" for compliance and a year to implement it, or face heavy fines.

Facebook responded by saying it would appeal the FCO´s decision.

On Monday the Duesseldorf court found it had "serious doubts" about the FCO's February ruling.

"Even if the data processing in question infringed data protection provisions, this would not at the same time constitute a breach of competition law," the court said in a statement.

It therefore issued a temporary injunction and ruled that, pending a final settlement of the issue, "Facebook does not have to implement the decision of the Federal Cartel Office for the time being".