On August 1, 2024, following five years of litigation, Tevra’s antitrust suit against Bayer Healthcare LLC came to an end. Tevra, a manufacturer of generic version topical flea and tick medications, alleged that Bayer engaged...more
8/15/2024
/ Animal Health ,
Anticompetitive Behavior ,
Antitrust Litigation ,
Competition ,
Generic Drugs ,
Manufacturers ,
Monopolization ,
Patents ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Sherman Act ,
The Clayton Act
On December 18, 2023, The Federal Trade Commission and Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice concluded a nearly two-year process of updating both the horizontal and vertical merger guidelines with the release of the...more
3/11/2024
/ Anti-Competitive ,
Antitrust Provisions ,
Competition ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Horizontal Mergers ,
Mergers ,
Monopolization ,
The Clayton Act ,
Vertical Mergers
Last month, we discussed where things stand regarding Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition of Blizzard, Inc. (“Activision”) in light of domestic and international challenges to the proposed deal. This week, the...more
The Seventh Circuit recently revived an antitrust challenge to a clause in McDonald’s franchise agreements barring franchises from poaching other franchises’ employees. (See our previous coverage of antitrust challenges to...more
Since the announcement of a proposed merger between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, Inc. (“Activision”) in February 2022, enforcement agencies worldwide have adopted a spectrum of positions in response. The EU Commission...more
On July 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit declined to block the $315 million purchase of Imperial Sugar Company (“Imperial”) by United States Sugar Corporation (“U.S. Sugar”), rejecting the Department...more
Two labor-market criminal antitrust trials recently ended in acquittals, further demonstrating the challenges the United States has faced in this area (See our previous coverage of this prosecution trend, reported on: Feb....more
JetBlue Airways Corporation (“JetBlue”) is currently defending two antitrust lawsuits brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) in the District of Massachusetts. In the first, which was filed in March, DOJ challenges...more
On April 14, 2023, the Supreme Court issued a consolidated opinion in Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. FTC and SEC v. Cochran.[1] We previously covered the oral argument in these cases here. These cases address whether respondents...more
Commissioner Alvaro M. Bedoya of the Federal Trade Commission recently addressed a key tension brewing in the consumer protection and antitrust spaces since the rise of the app-based gig economy: whether gig workers...more
In a recent lawsuit, the State of Ohio has accused certain pharmaceutical benefit managers, or “PBMs,” of violating state antitrust laws. According to the complaint, the PBMs have leveraged their market dominance to enrich...more
Two of the Department of Justice’s labor-market criminal antitrust prosecutions have seen interesting recent developments. (See our previous coverage of this prosecution trend, reported on: Feb. 9th; May 2nd; Sept. 22nd; and...more
Last month, the DOJ finally secured its first criminal conviction for a labor-market antitrust offense. (Check here for our previous coverage of this prosecution trend.) VDA OC LLC (“VDA”), a healthcare staffing company,...more
The DOJ’s efforts to prosecute alleged wage-fixing and employee non-solicitation agreements have continued to develop over the last few months. Most notably, the DOJ nearly secured its first criminal conviction on a no-poach...more
Recently Judge Matthew F. Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois denied the motions to dismiss filed by 17 top private universities in a class action lawsuit accusing the universities of conspiring to fix prices by...more
The Tenth Circuit recently became the first federal court of appeals to address an antitrust challenge to a relationship central to modern pharmaceutical drug markets: the price negotiations between drug companies and...more
Missouri resident Elliot Conrad Dale recently filed an antitrust lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline (“GSK”), claiming GSK employed a “device hopping” scheme to ensure uninterrupted patent and regulatory protection for its...more
Last month, the first two trials arising from the DOJ’s recent push to criminally prosecute wage-fixing and employee non-solicitation agreements both ended in acquittals on the antitrust charges. In United States v. Jindal,...more
Under the Biden Administration, the FTC and DOJ have voiced a commitment to an expansive enforcement of antitrust law. The recent confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to assume Justice Breyer’s position on the Supreme...more
Two weeks ago, the District of Colorado denied defendants’ motion to dismiss in a criminal case targeting agreements between competitors not to solicit (or “poach”) each other’s employees. United States v. DaVita Inc. et...more
The Fourth Circuit ruled last month that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority, which does business as Atrium Health, is immune from antitrust damages as a “special function governmental unit” under the Local...more
On April 13, 2021, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued its long-anticipated decision in Impax v. FTC, marking the first time an appellate court has weighed in on the merits of a so-called reverse payment case...more
Recent decisions in two different antitrust cases involving price increases and marketing practices for the EpiPen address a relationship solidly embedded in the current architecture of pharmaceutical drug markets: payments...more
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the FTC is suing pharmaceutical manufacturers Endo and Impax over an alleged “reverse payment” agreement to reduce competition in the market for Opana ER, an oxymorphone extended...more
On November 20, 2020, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) finalized a rule to take effect in 2022, which eliminates the safe harbor under the federal anti-kickback statute for manufacturer rebates to Medicare...more