The authors are David Balto, an antitrust attorney in Washington, D.C., who was formerly a policy director of the Federal Trade Commission, attorney-adviser to Chairman Robert Pitofsky, and trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, and Hal J. Singer, Ph.D., who is a Managing Director at Navigant Economics and a Senior Fellow at the…
Cartel enforcement in Canada is heavily dependent on the use of informants. This is explained by two principal factors. First, cartel conduct is, by its very nature, secretive and carried out in the shadows of business life. Second, Canada’s Competition Bureau, which is responsible for investigating cartels, is subject to budget constraints that limit its…
Nearly 100 year ago, Congress established the Federal Trade Commission to protect consumers against unfair, deceptive and anticompetitive practices. Part of the reason for its creation was to create an independent, fair and expert body to resolve complex antitrust claims, because the federal courts seemed incapable of enforcing the antitrust laws. So Congress enabled the…
The Department of Justice Antitrust Division on Friday filed its proposed remedy with the federal district court in New York City, addressing Apple Inc.’s role in a conspiracy among publishers to fix retail prices for electronic books, or e-books. Following a bench trial, the court last month found Apple liable in an action brought by the Justice…
Apple Inc. played a central role in facilitating and executing a conspiracy among publishers to fix retail prices for electronic books, or e-books, the federal district court in New York City decided last week. The finding of liability against Apple comes after a bench trial that lasted from June 3 to June 20 in an…
MacAndrews and Forbes’ (M&F) settlement with the Department of Justice (DOJ) on June 20, 2013, provides a good reminder that simply surviving the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act waiting period or receiving an early termination is not the end of HSR premerger notification compliance. The settlement demonstrates the need to be continually vigilant of HSR compliance matters,…
It’s going to be a strict, nearly-per-se quick look rule, folks, in more or less every reverse-payment case likely to be brought from here on out. Dollars-to-donuts. A few weeks have gone by, and quite a lot of folks are chewing over the entrails of Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc. The case may finally…
Consumers and small businesses that are parties to contracts containing arbitration agreements will find it tougher, if not impossible, to avoid the terms of those agreements and pursue an antitrust action in court against the other contracting party, in light of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Noting that “the antitrust laws do not guarantee an…
Terrell McSweeny, Chief Counsel for Competition Policy and Intergovernmental Relations at the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, is President Obama’s pick to fill the current vacancy on five-member Federal Trade Commission. The White House announced today the President’s intention to nominate McSweeny. According to the announcement, McSweeny has served in the senior counsel position at…
A “reverse payment” settlement agreement is not entitled to “near-automatic antitrust immunity” simply because its anticompetitive effects fall within the scope of the exclusionary potential of the patent, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this week in a five-to-three decision. Although such agreements, also known as “pay-for-delay” settlements, are not presumptively unlawful, the FTC should be…
