Interoperability

The term interoperability refers to the technical ability of tools or machines to articulate with each other, to work together.

This is particularly important in IT, for example between source software and application software, and in finance between market infrastructures. Likewise, the interconnection of networks is a mode of interoperability.

Regulation imposes ex ante the interoperability of techniques, for example by unifying standards, by giving the regulator the power to adopt them and impose them on everyone or by condemning the dominant operator to communicate its know-how to others, interoperability then being a form of right of access. The European Commission condemned Microsoft for abuse of a dominant position to give its source codes to its competitors wishing to develop application software which shows that, as for essential facilities, the ex post of the judicial handling of competition law can have the same effects as the ex ante handling of regulatory law.