Protecting sellers from unjustified enrichment of dominant platforms

the paper examines the features of protecting sellers from unjustified enrichment of dominant platforms. The need for analysis is due to the rapid growth of the digital economy, in which dominant marketplaces create serious systemic risks for sellers caused by practices of unjustified enrichment, including the unilateral imposition of disproportionate fines, the use of accession agreements to shift the burden of proof and the construction of economic barriers to judicial protection. The aim is to analyze the legal instruments and practices that lead to the transfer of profits from sellers to the dominant digital platforms. The author's hypothesis is that the current norms of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and established judicial practice are not fully capable of neutralizing the systemic imbalances between the platform and the seller. To restore economic equivalence, it is necessary to form a special legal regime combining preventive antitrust measures and private law mechanisms for compensation of damages and recovery of unlawfully withheld amounts. The study, based on comparative legal, formal legal and systematic analysis of legislation, systematizes these models of enrichment, reveals the insufficient effectiveness of articles in the field of protecting the interests of sellers and suggests a set of measures to improve legal regulation.

marketplace, digital platform, unjustified enrichment, dominant position, seller, affiliation agreement, burden of proof, disproportionate fines, success fee, protection of entrepreneurs' rights