📋 Tender Overview
The ACCC has preliminary competition concerns with Turnitins proposed acquisition of Ouriginal.Turnitin and Ouriginal are international providers of anti-plagiarism software primarily overlapping in the supply of this software to higher education customers such as universities. They make up two of only three anti-plagiarism software providers to Australian universities.Anti-plagiarism software is a tool used to scan student assignments on submission to identify possible plagiarism. The software may check for matches against previous student submissions academic journals and web pages through their respective databases.Turnitin is by far the largest provider of this software to Australian universities. It holds a large cross institutional database of reference material including a significant number of student papers and academic journals that are used to check submitted works for plagiarism ACCC Commissioner Stephen Ridgeway said.The ACCC is concerned that the proposed acquisition will substantially lessen competition in an already highly concentrated market and may lead to higher prices or reduced service levels for the Australian higher education sector.Ouriginal which is a large supplier in Europe has far fewer customers in Australia than Turnitin. However it is one of Turnitins only competitors in the higher education sector and may develop into an important competitive constraint on Turnitin Mr Ridgeway said. Some stakeholders have suggested to us that Ouriginal is cheaper and may have a more innovative product compared to Turnitin.The ACCC is also considering the likelihood of other international software providers entering or expanding in Australia to compete with Turnitin. These providers appear to face various challenges to compete for Australian customers including building a database of student papers and overcoming customers reluctance to switch to new or unknown providers.Barriers to entry appear to be high in this market with strong network effects and economies of scale being enjoyed by Turnitin. What we are focussing on here is whether Turnitin is buying out its most promising competitive threat to protect its market position Mr Ridgeway said.Other than Blackboards SafeAssign no other anti-plagiarism software companies have established a competitive presence in our higher education sector to date particularly among universities.The ACCC is also concerned that the proposed acquisition may reduce incentives for Turnitin to innovate with its products without future competition from Ouriginal.Decisions to innovate will likely be made on a global level and consider a broader range of competitors that do not currently operate in Australia. If the incentives to innovate are reduced globally Australian customers may be negatively impacted Mr Ridgeway said.The ACCC has published a statement of issues available on the public register page and is seeking further information.The ACCC is inviting feedback on the statement of issues by 27 September 2021.
