The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has granted partial relief to Meta Platforms and its messaging arm WhatsApp in the high-profile competition case stemming from WhatsApp’s 2021 privacy-policy update.

While the tribunal upheld the ₹213.14 crore penalty imposed by the CCI, it overturned key findings of dominance and removed the five-year ban on user-data sharing for advertising purposes.

The saga began when in November 2024 the CCI found that WhatsApp had abused its dominant position in the Indian OTT-messaging market by forcing a “take-it-or-leave-it” update in January 2021.

The update made sharing user data with other Meta entities mandatory - removing an earlier opt-out - and the CCI concluded this weakened competition in the online display-advertising market.

In its

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