On April 27, 2016, the FTC entered an administrative complaint against Invibio, Inc., accusing it and its parent company, Victrex, of violating FTC Act Section 5 through exclusive dealing contracts. The companies agreed to a consent order, also issued that day. Because the antitrust aspects of exclusive dealing remain unsettled, practitioners (and their clients) would…
Protecting electronic networks and information systems against cyber-intrusions often requires real-time information sharing among private and governmental entities, but some in the cybersecurity community have expressed concerns in recent years that legal uncertainty has hampered information-sharing efforts. The U.S. Congress recently took steps to address these concerns by passing the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of…
A long-running Department of Justice practice of avoiding Tunney Act procedures when seeking federal district court approval of civil penalty settlements in enforcement actions alleging Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act premerger notification violations is apparently coming to an end. This past week, the Justice Department published proposed final judgments and the related competitive impact statements for public…
On April 5, 2016 the Department of Justice held a press conference to announce a “new” program involving enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)(press release here). The program, generally referred to as the Pilot Program, is outlined in a document released by the Fraud Section of the Criminal Division of DOJ entitled: “The…
On March 29, 2016, the Canadian Commissioner of Competition and Parkland Fuel Corp. entered into a consent agreement to resolve the Commissioner’s challenge to Parkland’s acquisition of Pioneer Energy. This marks the first time in a Canadian Competition Tribunal proceeding that a consent agreement has been negotiated through mediation. The consent agreement includes not only…
Antitrust is hot! Well, as hot as antitrust gets: the mainstream media has covered antitrust issues a few times recently, and policy discussions have broken out in Congress and on the campaign trail. While I disagree with many of the comments, I think it is great that such questions are being discussed by policymakers, reporters,…
Summary On 10 March 2016, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) handed down judgments[1] that provide useful clarification regarding limits on information requests issued by the European Commission in antitrust investigations – in particular as regards the statement of reasons to be provided. Facts Following dawn raids and the opening of an investigation into suspected…
The U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of the petition for certiorari in the McWane case on Monday dashed the hopes of many antitrust practitioners that the Court might provide some much-needed clarity on the antitrust implications of using exclusive dealing arrangements. The denial also makes it highly unlikely that the High Court will be issuing any…
On January 20, 2016, the European Court of Justice (the Court) issued a seminal preliminary ruling on the relationship between EU and Member State leniency programmes in Case C‑428/14, DHL Express (Italy) Srl and DHL Global Forwarding (Italy) SpA v. Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM). The Court held that EU and Member…
In 2009, It’s My Party, Inc. (IMP) sued Live Nation (LN) in federal district court in Maryland alleging anticompetitive tying, bundling, and other forms of monopolization. In February 2015, the court granted Live Nation’s second summary judgment motion. IMP appealed, surely thinking that it was LN’s turn to cry. Instead, in February 2016, the Fourth…
