The voting deadline for the 2018 Antitrust Writing Awards has been extended to February 16. The Antitrust Writing Awards is a joint initiative between Concurrences Review and the George Washington University Law School. The deadline for submitting articles was December 2017, and nominations for more than 600 papers were received. The Awards Editorial Committee selected…
It’s shaping up to be a busy term for antitrust issues at the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court on January 12 decided to review a third antitrust case. In the context of a price fixing action against foreign vitamin C manufacturers, the Court will consider “whether a court may exercise independent review of an appearing…
On December 19, 2017, the Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) published a press release on its preliminary assessment in the ongoing Facebook dominance probe, accompanied by a background paper (available in English here). The FCO considers that Facebook abuses its dominant position through imposing unfair general terms and conditions (“t&cs”). The published materials provide some interesting…
The following post offers a look back at important trends in antitrust enforcement over the past year. Many of the significant developments that are detailed below, including merger challenges and leadership changes, will have a lasting impact on 2018 and beyond. MERGER ENFORCEMENT Department of Justice litigation. The biggest antitrust news story of 2017 was…
The Justice Department’s challenge to AT&T’s proposed $108 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc. is likely the biggest antitrust news story of the year. Much of the attention from the mainstream media has been focused on possible influence by President Trump on the Justice Department’s decision to seek divestitures of assets, such as CNN, to…
This is Part Three of a four-part series of posts by myself and colleague Kimberly Justice on “It Is Time for an Antitrust Whistleblower Statute.” Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here. ******************************************************** Note: If the Grassley/Leahy Anti-Retaliation Act is passed, that protection would be part of the whistleblower statute. Ms. Justice and I are advocating that…
Objections to an Antitrust Whistleblower Statute The idea of an antitrust whistleblower is not new, but it has never gained much traction in the past. There have been significant objections, or at least disinterest—particularly from the Department of Justice. The mood seemed to be “Our cup runneth over with Amnesty applications so let’s not screw…
Kimberly Justice and I wrote an article published in Global Competition Review arguing that it is time for an “Antitrust Whistleblower Statute.” [The article is behind a pay firewall (here).] Kimberly and I will be expanding on this idea in Cartel Capers blog posts over the next two weeks. Below is the first installment. We…
In my last post to AntitrustConnect, I wrote about the difficulties that antitrust plaintiffs face in getting to trial with claims based on circumstantial evidence. I discussed a decision of the federal district court in Chicago in a long-running class action against paper companies for conspiring to raise prices for containerboard provides an example of the…
In short: The Background: In September 2017, the European Court of Justice (Case C-413/14 P) reversed the ruling of the General Court, which had upheld the European Commission’s €1.06 billion fine on Intel for abusing its dominant position on the market for x86 central processing units. The Main Issue: The Intel case prompted much debate…
