#WorkforceWednesday: NLRB Wants Shuttered Starbucks Stores Reopened, Big Tech Retreats from DEI Programs, and Employers Scrap College Requirements - Employment Law This Week®
Nota Bene Podcast Episode 134: U.S. Q3 Check In: Infrastructure Bill Updates and Big Tech Antitrust with Elizabeth Frazee and Chani Wiggins
Nota Bene Episode 116: Challenging the U.S. Big Tech Antitrust Debate Assumptions: A Deep Dive with Thomas Dillickrath and Bill Margeson
What to Expect from the Biden Administration
Nota Bene Episode 104: European Q4 Check In: Brexit, Digital Platform Regulation, and National Security Regulation with Oliver Heinisch
Nota Bene Episode 68: The Current Antitrust Enforcement Climate in the United States with Capitol Forum Senior Editor Nate Soderstrom
Nota Bene Episode 46: America’s Existential Antitrust Crisis with Thomas Dillickrath
Does anybody remember Napster? Launched in June 1999, the revolutionary peer-to-peer music sharing platform peaked at 80 million music lovers worldwide. It famously fell from greatness into bankruptcy three years later after...more
2024 saw a significant increase in the total fines imposed in abuse of dominance cases compared to 2023, reversing a trend of decline in recent years. The rise in fine volumes was spread across all regions of the world, with...more
Digital regulation continues to be at the forefront of regulator concerns, as authorities focus on technology companies through traditional antitrust tools and new digital markets regimes. Further legislation and guidance is...more
2024 saw a significant increase in overall global fines for antitrust enforcement, with total penalties for the jurisdictions surveyed in our report at USD6.7 billion, over double that of 2023 (USD2.9bn) and substantially...more
Gail Slater was confirmed last week as Assistant Attorney General (AAG) for the Antitrust Division; companies should expect a continuation of many Biden-era approaches, with new cases and priorities to advance the Trump...more
As we look back on 2024, one thing is clear: Antitrust enforcement in the technology sector continued at a steady pace, with global agencies showing no signs of relenting in their scrutiny of Big Tech companies....more
On March 11, 2025, the U.S. Senate confirmed Gail Slater to lead the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. Slater received bipartisan support in her confirmation....more
In recent developments, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has amended its approach in the antitrust case against Alphabet’s Google, refocusing its legal strategy in tackling the perceived monopolistic control exerted by...more
On Thursday, February 20, 2025, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson announced a Request for Information (RFI) for “public submissions from anyone who has been a victim of tech censorship (banning, demonetization, shadow banning,...more
Key Points - Strong antitrust enforcement is expected to continue, but without the use of the novel and untested legal theories that defined the Biden administration approach. - Regulators are likely to continue to focus...more
The Trump Administration’s antitrust enforcement priorities are beginning to take shape. On January 20, 2025, President Trump designated former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commissioner Andrew Ferguson as the agency’s next...more
Merger control: The merger control thresholds in the UK have been broadened to capture ‘vertical’ and ‘conglomerate’ transactions (transactions involving parties that do not have overlapping activities). New SMS regime: A...more
On 25 April 2023, the same day on which the European Commission (EC) adopted its first designation decisions under its Digital Services Act (DSA), the United Kingdom (UK) Parliament published its long-awaited Digital Markets,...more
On January 24, 2023, the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled a top executive from Live Nation, Ticketmaster’s parent company, following Ticketmaster’s very public disaster last month when it was unable to process orders for...more
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced last week that directors at several technology companies have resigned as a consequence of the agency’s renewed focus on overlapping board membership between...more
FTC Suit Aspires to Chill M&A-Based Growth by Larger Tech Firms - Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has consistently criticized past FTC leadership for being too lenient with Big Tech M&A activity, and for not...more
On May 6, 2022, the UK government outlined its plans to boost competition and drive economic growth and innovation in a major regulatory reform aimed at big tech. The news comes in the wake of fears that a handful of tech...more
In a blow to Google and the rest of Big Tech, an EU appeals court has refused to “overturn a landmark antitrust ruling by European regulators” from 2017 over Google’s alleged “preferential treatment to its own...more
The U.K. government is consulting on far-reaching reforms to U.K. competition and consumer laws, which would substantially expand the powers of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and reduce procedural protections....more
The UK Government is consulting on proposed powers for the recently launched Digital Markets Unit. This is a significant juncture in the reconfiguration of the post-Brexit regulatory landscape, marked by a determination to...more
2021 has been a busy year for antitrust legislation. On February 4, 2021, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and four other senators introduced the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Act of 2021 (“Klobuchar Bill”)....more
Under the Clayton Act (15 U.S. Code § 18), certain business acquisitions are prohibited where “the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.” Long-standing...more
“Mark my words: Change is coming. Laws are coming.” That was the warning David Cicilline (D-RI) – the House Judiciary Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law Subcommittee Chairman – gave on February 25th at the first in...more
I have written recently about the crashing tsunami of change in legal attitudes toward the largest U.S. data, technology and internet companies, especially in the antitrust realm. As we consider whether GAFA critic Tim Wu...more
Hard on the heels of the muckle of anti-trust filings against the huge U.S. technology companies in the past few months, the United States Senate indicates that clamping down on Big Tech will be a priority for the new...more