“Leave no firm to competition”: Doctolib heavily condemned for 6 years of illegal practices

The Competition Authority has just condemned Doctolib to a fine of 4,665,000 euros for abuse of a dominant position. The decision, made public this Thursday, November 6, follows a complaint filed by Cegedim Santé and searches carried out in 2021.

Doctolib sanctioned for having closed the market for making medical appointments

The medical appointment booking platform is accused of having implemented two separate offenses. The first concerns the insertion, until September 2023, of exclusivity clauses in its contracts with health professionals. These clauses prohibited or dissuaded them from using competing services.

The Authority reveals that Doctolib maintained these provisions in full knowledge of their illegality. According to the official document, the company’s legal department had warned that such a clause “is illegal under competition law”. Despite this warning, the president of Doctolib chose to keep it, considering “that we must strategically keep it”.

The internal documents seized testify to an assumed desire. The leaders displayed ambition “to be an obligatory and strategic interface between the doctor and his patient in order to lock them both in”. The objective was to “leave no firm to the competition”.

The second offense concerns the acquisition of MonDocteur, in July 2018. This acquisition, which remained under the regulatory radar, was, according to the Authority, aimed at eliminating the number one competitor. The internal notes clearly mention, and here again we cite the Authority’s document, the desire to “kill the product”specifying that “value creation is not the addition of the asset but its disappearance as a competitor”. This operation allowed Doctolib to gain 10,000 practitioners and sustainably increase its market share, which has exceeded 50% since 2017 and reached 90% in some years.

It also opened the way to successive price increases, higher than initial forecasts, without loss of customers. The Authority is sanctioning a predatory acquisition for the first time, relying on the Towercast judgment of March 2023. However, given the legal uncertainty prior to this judgment, it is only imposing a symbolic fine of 50,000 euros for this practice.

Doctolib announces appeal

In a press release published the same day, Doctolib dispute the decision and announces an appeal.

“This decision presents an erroneous reading of our activity, and our sector. Doctolib is in no way in a dominant position”affirms the company, which specifies that “despite our strong use by the general public, Doctolib is a recent player in the sector of software for caregivers and today only equips 30% of French caregivers.” An argument which contrasts sharply with the Authority’s numerical findings.

The appeal procedure could take several months, or even years, before a final decision is rendered on this first case of predatory acquisition sanctioned in France.