A judge on Friday released a ruling denying the Federal Trade Commission’s request to block Meta Platforms from buying virtual reality content maker Within Unlimited, dismissing regulators’ concerns that the deal would increase competition in a new market would decrease.
A December trial to decide if Meta Being able to continue with the relatively small deal was seen as a test FTCAttempting to fend off what it sees as the company’s repeat acquisition of small emerging competitors to dominate a market, this time in the emerging virtual and augmented reality markets.
The verdict was issued in sealed form earlier this week. The version published on Friday evening has been edited.
A meta speaker said so Facebook And Instagram The owner was “pleased that the court denied the FTC’s motion to block our acquisition of Within.”
“We look forward to completing the transaction soon,” the spokesman said in a statement.
The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Judge Edward Davila of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said the FTC has failed to establish that Meta would have entered the market to create specialty fitness content if it were not able to purchase Within.
“Although Meta has significant financial and VR engineering resources, it didn’t have the unique capabilities VR dedicated fitness applicationsspecifically the creation of fitness content and studio production facilities,” the judge wrote.
The decision is good news for Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, who defended the acquisition in testimony in December, arguing that his company was helping to build the virtual reality industry but not dominating it.
Zuckerberg testified in federal court in San Jose, Calif. that owning Within was “not that critical” to Meta’s ambitions and that “it’s less important that we own the experiences than that they exist.”
The FTC sued Meta in July to stop the within deal and asked the judge to order an injunction. She said Meta’s “campaign to conquer VR” began in 2014 when it acquired Oculus, a VR headset maker.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
