House Antitrust Panel to Hold Hearing on Big Tech Market Power

(Bloomberg) -- The House antitrust panel investigating the technology industry will hear complaints next week about the market effect that big technology giants have on smaller companies.

The House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee will hear testimony from Sonos Inc. Chief Executive Officer Patrick Spence and David Barnett, the founder and CEO of PopSockets, among others.

The hearing, which will take place in Boulder, Colorado, will likely amplify concerns from smaller tech firms that major platforms such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Amazon.com Inc copy their innovations and then use marketplace dominance to squash competition.

On Tuesday, Sonos sued Google, alleging the search giant ripped off its designs for wireless home speakers and placed them inside Google phones and laptops.

This will be the fifth hearing of Representative David Cicilline’s broad antitrust inquiry. His subcommittee has already held hearings on the effect digital platforms have on the news industry, how tech companies handle users’ privacy, and on innovation and entrepreneurship that featured appearances by executives from Google, Amazon, Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc.

--With assistance from Ben Brody.

To contact the reporter on this story: Naomi Nix in Washington at nnix1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Wendy Benjaminson, Anna Edgerton

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