Brussels, 13/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 12 July 2012, the European Commission opened a consultation process with third parties on the new commitments offered by Thomson Reuters to meet concerns about potential abuse of a dominant position on the market for real-time, consolidated data flows.
The Commission fears that its policy for the licensing of Reuters Identification Codes (RIC, used to search Thomson Reuters' databases in real-time) may be in breach of EU rules because the company does not allow clients to use the RICs to access data from other suppliers and does not allow them to cross-reference alternative codes from other suppliers (known as “mapping”). Customers wanting to switch would have to remove the RICs from their applications and replace them with alternative codes, which is tricky, costly and in effect prevents clients from switching in practice.
To deal with these concerns, Thomson Reuters suggests giving its clients licences whereby, for payment of a monthly fee, they can use their RICs to access other suppliers and also offers to provide clients with details they need to cross-reference information encoded by other suppliers.
This is an improvement on the pledges offered by the company last year because the new licence could be used worldwide and a different licence would be available for third-party developers to help them facilitate customer switching. (FG/transl.fl)