In our annual forecast of the year ahead for Canadian competition and foreign investment review law, the Davies Competition Law and Foreign Investment Group outlines the “Top 10″ key issues and trends to watch for this year. 1. A Green Light for Class Actions by Indirect Purchasers The Supreme Court of Canada issued an important…
On November 12, 2013, the European Commission published a summary of its December 20, 2012 decision (the “Decision”) accepting commitments offered by members of the Thomson Reuters group (“Thomson Reuters”). The Decision ended a three-year-long investigation that began in October 2009 into Thomson Reuters’ alleged abuse of a dominant position in a market defined as…
Some U.S. Supreme Court watchers may have been disappointed that the Court on the last day of the October 2011 term–according to the Court’s calendar–did not decide the fate of President Obama’s health care overhaul legislation. That decision is most likely to come within the next three days, before the Court wraps up for the…
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…
How far can a competitor go in an effort to convince a local government to block a potential rival from setting up shop in its area without running afoul of the antitrust laws? Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled that a hospital was shielded from antitrust liability for allegedly making misrepresentations…
Microsoft Corporation has filed a formal complaint with the European Commission (EC) against Google Inc. as part of the EC’s ongoing antitrust investigation into the search engine company. In a March 30 blog post, Brad Smith, Microsoft Senior Vice President and General Counsel, said that the software company and search engine rival wanted to register…
Claims that E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company attempted to wield, and did wield, monopoly power over the U.S. para-aramid fiber market in violation of Sec. 2 of the Sherman Act should not have been dismissed, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, has decided. Kolon Industries, Inc., a small seller of para-aramid…
The Federal Trade Commission recently suffered a significant setback in its merger enforcement efforts when the federal district court in Minneapolis rejected an action brought by the agency along with the State of Minnesota against global pharmaceutical company Lundbeck, Inc. In December 2008, the FTC and Minnesota filed a complaint against Ovation Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which…
The Eighth Circuit’s recent decision in Southeast Missouri Hospital v. C.R. Bard, Inc., ___ F.3d ___, 2010 WL 3220600 (8th Cir. Aug. 17, 2010), aligns this Circuit with the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Cascade Health Solutions v. PeaceHealth, 515 F.3d 883, 906-07 (9th Cir.2008).. Under those decisions the Sherman Act tests for exclusion by means…
