On June 23, 2014, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division held a workshop on “conditional pricing practices”—loyalty discounts, bundled discounts and similar pricing techniques. Many economists, academic experts and practitioners, some of them even hailing from outside the Beltway, opined on the rationale for and against antitrust legality of such…
The U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City on June 4 ruled that the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act (FTAIA) barred the antitrust claims of a Taiwanese electronics manufacturing company with facilities in China against a group of foreign competitors. In its decision, the court followed the Seventh Circuit’s recent decision in Minn‐Chem, Inc….
You remember American Needle, right? It is the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that explains when the action of a joint venture is the action of a single entity or, instead, the result of an agreement among the joint venture members. Now back on remand in federal district court in Chicago, some recent summary judgment…
Commissioner Josh Wright of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission certainly is the gift that keeps on giving to antitrust commentators. Rarely do many weeks go by without a Wright speech or dissenting opinion that cogently takes on an interesting competition issue, often one captured in an action by his fellow commissioners. Last month’s example was…
The Federal Trade Commission will soon be back to having a full complement of five commissioners. Today, the U.S. Senate, by a vote of 95 to 1, confirmed Terrell McSweeny to fill a vacancy at the agency created by the departure of Jon D. Leibowitz more than a year ago. The term runs through September…
In case you missed some of those morning sessions at the American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law Spring Meeting last week, here are some of the highlights from the updates with federal and state enforcers. Agency Update with the Deputy Assistant Attorneys General There were some new faces on the panel this year at…
About ten days ago, the Council of the EU failed to reach an agreement on the proposed increase in the number of judges sitting at the General Court of the European Union. The Council thus buried ‑ and for quite a while – a proposal which could have helped the General Court reduce its currently…
Back in September 2012, the potential anticompetitive aspects of most favored nation (MFN) clauses was the hot antitrust topic. While antitrust counselors (and courts) had found the clauses to be innocuous almost all the time, government officials made speeches and even held a workshop in front of an overflow crowd to discuss theories about when…
Although the parties reached a $7.25 billion class action settlement of the antitrust suit brought by merchants against Visa and MasterCard over swipe fees, the case is far from over. The protracted legal battle centers on allegations by merchants that Visa and MasterCard engaged in a price-fixing conspiracy to set interchange fees and then imposed…
Six months ago in Can the FTC Be a Fair Umpire? I wrote about the concerns arising from the Federal Trade Commission’s dual role as prosecutor and final decision maker in its administrative litigation. I noted that for 19 years in every case brought by the Commission it had found an antitrust violation. I observed…
