After the first Monday in October, there were few petitions involving antitrust and trade regulation disputes pending on the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket. However, within just one month, the Court has been asked to review three high-profile antitrust decisions. Word on whether the Court will take up any of the cases is unlikely before next year….
The fall conference season is in full swing. Just this week, top officials from the federal antitrust agencies are speaking at Georgetown Law School’s Ninth Annual Global Antitrust Enforcement Symposium, Fordham Law’s 42nd Annual Conference on International Antitrust Law and Policy, and the Merger Practice Workshop sponsored by the ABA Section of Antitrust Law and…
UPDATE: The bi-partisan “Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act of 2015” passed the Senate by unanimous consent on July 22. A bill is advancing through the U.S. Senate that would protect employees who report suspected criminal antitrust activity to their employer or the federal government from workplace retaliation. The proposed “Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act of 2015” (S….
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court was asked, in parallel petitions, to resolve a split between the Seventh Circuit and the Ninth Circuit on the application of the federal antitrust laws to a conspiracy to fix prices of thin-film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) panels. The petitions provide an excellent opportunity for the High Court to offer…
The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division had another active year in antitrust enforcement in 2014. As for FTC antitrust enforcement efforts, FTC Bureau of Competition Director Deborah L. Feinstein was kind enough to provide a list of the “Ten Competition Happenings for 2014” on the agency’s Competition Matters blog. Her list…
Antitrust law debates usually emphasize price effects while other elements of competition get less attention. Three recent writings by leading antitrust thinkers, however, explore the interaction between antitrust law and competition, on the one hand, and innovation, quality and long-term labor markets, respectively, on the other. As summarized below, each piece discusses an attribute of…
As the U.S. Sentencing Commission considers reforms of the guidelines for antitrust crimes, it should take action to affirm the importance of antitrust compliance programs as an essential tool in the fight against cartels, and to provide a balance against the Antitrust Division’s past approach of refusing to consider compliance programs in any case for…
The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco last week upheld the price fixing convictions of Taiwanese electronics manufacturer AU Optronics (AUO), its U.S. subsidiary, and two company executives. The appellate court also affirmed a $500 million fine against AUO, the only defendant to challenge the sentence. The case is U.S. v. Hsiung, No. 12-10492. In…
Last week, the federal district court in San Francisco ruled that Bazaarvoice Inc.’s June 2012 acquisition of PowerReviews Inc. violated Sec. 7 of the Clayton Act. In a “necessarily lengthy Opinion,” the court concluded that the Department of Justice Antitrust Division prevailed in the liability phase of its case against the leading provider of online Ratings…
Wow, what a success! The Antitrust Division recently announced that its investigations in the auto parts market uncovered “separate conspiracies to fix the prices of more than 30 different products sold to US car manufacturers ….” [1] This adds to the results thus far in the investigation, with guilty pleas from 20 companies and fines…
