It is beginning to look like the U.S. Supreme Court will not be taking up any antitrust cases in the current term. Last week, the Court denied six petitions for review in antitrust-related matters. Just yesterday, the Court denied a petition for review in a Federal Trade Commission antitrust enforcement action. There have been far…
The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved legislation that, in addition to funding the Federal Trade Commission next year, would increase the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act premerger filing fees that help fund the agency. The legislation (S. 1573) also would block efforts to relocate the headquarters of the FTC from its current location at 600 Pennsylvania Avenue,…
The Eight Circuit, in FTC v. Lundbeck, Inc., No. 10-3458/3459 (Aug. 19, 2011), upheld the district court’s finding that the FTC failed to show a relevant market, and thus was unable to challenge the acquisition of the drug NeoProfen. It already owned a drug called Indocin IV, which, along with NeoProfen, was used to treat…
What really has the world come to when a merger to monopoly followed by a 1300% price increase survives Section 7 challenge? That, sadly, seems to be the final result in Federal Trade Commission v. Lundbeck, which the Eighth Circuit affirmed last Friday. There the maker of one drug to treat a heart defect in…
Maureen K. Ohlhausen, a Washington, D.C. attorney and former Federal Trade Commission staffer, will likely be returning to the agency as a Commissioner. Yesterday evening, the White House announced President Barack Obama’s intention to nominate Ohlhausen to fill the position currently held by Commissioner William E. Kovacic. Kovacic’s term on the five-member Commission expires in…
Yesterday, I released a paper at the Center for American Progress on the Obama antitrust record. In the paper, entitled “Reinvigorating Antitrust Enforcement: The Obama Administration’s Progressive Direction on Competition Law and Policy in Challenging Economic Times,” I assesses the Obama administration’s antitrust enforcement up to now and offer recommendations to strengthen that enforcement going forward. …
Some of Google’s critics analogize Google’s conduct today to that of Microsoft’s during its heyday of the 1990s: Like Microsoft, Google is big. Like Microsoft, Google has hampered the opportunities of rivals. And like Microsoft, Google has abused its purported dominant position in online search by prominently displaying its own products in search results and excluding competitors. This analogy may…
Today Google announced that the FTC had opened an investigation of its search practices. This is an issue I have given considerable thought to. In an article I just released—Internet Search Competition: Where’s the Beef?—I explain that while Google is the “target du jour in the antitrust community,” efforts to bring antitrust enforcement against Google…
Some commentators are pretty alarmed over the Federal Trade Commission’s ruling earlier this year denying antitrust immunity for a North Carolina regulatory board’s outlawry of teeth-whitening by non-dentists. What has some of them using words like “epic,” and what has the state regulator-defendant virtually threatening secession from the Union (just take a look at the…
Today, the Federal Trade Commission released a plan for dealing with a government shutdown that would occur if Congress fails to enact appropriations by a midnight deadline. A shutdown looked likely as budget talks appeared to have broken down early Friday morning. As part of the FTC’s plan, the Commission’s Premerger Notification Office would remain…
