In what may be the first case ever, a party to an FTC administrative merger challenge has filed suit in U.S. District Court asking the court to halt the administrative proceeding and order the FTC to pursue a preliminary...more
On January 26, 2018, the Federal Trade Commission announced revised notification thresholds pursuant to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended. The HSR Act requires parties to file notification...more
The FCC recently repealed the net neutrality rules. Now your favorite ISP can charge more for better and faster access, deny you access to sites you really shouldn’t be looking at (we’re looking at you CNN), and degrade all...more
Shortly after the Justice Department’s challenge to AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner was announced, a rumor floated that AT&T had offered to divest CNN to assuage the Division’s concerns. The gist of the rumor was that the...more
After months of speculation among the consumer protection and antitrust bars, Trump announced today his intention to nominate former Director of the Bureau of Competition and current Paul Weiss partner Joseph Simons as...more
On July 6, 2017, QVC announced its intent to acquire the remaining 62 percent of Home Shopping Network it doesn’t already own. More so than DraftKings or Walgreens, this transaction will demonstrate whether Trump’s election...more
The European Commission has fined Google €2.42 billion ($2.7 billion) after concluding the company had abused its dominance in search. According to a letter from the EC announcing the results of its investigation, Google has...more
Federal Trade Commission Acting Chairman Ohlhausen and Commissioner McSweeny recently gave two very different speeches on algorithmic pricing. Commissioner McSweeny’s speech seemed to express concern that algorithms would...more
The Economist recently announced that the world’s most valuable resource is now data, displacing oil for the top spot. The “titans” of the digital era—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft—look “unstoppable” as...more
A few weeks ago, we looked at price setting bots and whether what they were doing could constitute a violation of the Sherman Act. Generally, we concluded that a bot that set price off a competitor’s publicly available prices...more
On Thursday, March 16, 2017, in a speech at the Bundeskartellamt’s 18th Conference on Competition, European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, discussed the specter of automated price fixing cartels. She...more
On January 19, 2017, the Federal Trade Commission announced revised notification thresholds pursuant to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended. The HSR Act requires parties to file notification...more
On December 14, 2016, President Obama signed into law the Better Online Ticket Sales Act of 2016. The BOTS Act prohibits circumventing a website’s security measures to acquire event tickets. It also restricts the reselling...more
The Premerger Notification Office of the Federal Trade Commission announced on November 28, 2016, that they were revoking previous informal advice regarding the scope of Items 4(c) and 4(d) of the HSR Form. In the past, the...more
Regardless of your political affiliation, it is worth understanding the potential changes to antitrust enforcement in the next administration. We will take a look at how antitrust might be handled by each of the two major...more
Fortiline LLC distributes ductile iron pipe. It competes with the manufacturer which somewhat regularly undercuts its distributor in the market. Fortiline on several occasions asked the manufacturer not to do so. Fortiline...more
The FTC sued 1800Contacts for entering into a series of agreements with competitors that limited the competitors’ ability to bid on certain trademarked terms as search terms in online search term auctions.
Search engines...more
Uber Technologies Co. announced today that it was selling its Chinese affiliate to rival Didi Chuxing Technology Co. The Wall Street Journal reports that the sale is the end of a three-year effort by Uber to penetrate the...more
Microsoft has an entrenched, enduring monopoly in both personal computer operating systems and office software. LinkedIn is the largest business-oriented social network. Are there antitrust issues with the combination? ...more
Last month, AMC and Carmike announced plans to merge. They would form the nation’s largest cinema chain with over 8,000 screens. Also last month, Napster founder Sean Parker announced a new product—Screening Room—which will...more
News Corp recently filed a complaint with the European Commission against Google over “improper scraping of content for use in search results.” News Corp alleges that Google takes News Corp content and makes it available in...more
On January 21, 2016, the Federal Trade Commission announced revised notification thresholds pursuant to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended. The HSR Act requires parties to file notification...more
New York has received permission to use over $8 billion in Medicare and Medicaid funds to revamp how healthcare is provided throughout the State. As part of this process, the New York State Department of Health (DOH) is...more
The D.C. Circuit recently affirmed a lower court’s decision upholding regulations adopted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requiring a Hart Scott Rodino (HSR) Act premerger notification filing for transfers of patent...more