The Department of Justice Antitrust Division “remains committed to taking all appropriate investigatory and enforcement action against conduct threatening harm to competition in agricultural markets,” according to a report released earlier this month. The report, entitled “Competition and Agriculture: Voices from the Workshops on Agriculture and Antitrust Enforcement in our 21st Century Economy and Thoughts…
In recent months, again there have been major developments in German competition law. Some of these developments have unfolded in high-tech industries, such as chipboard panel manufacturing, online video services and telecommunications, while others have arisen in more traditional contexts. At the legislative level, the German government has presented a draft bill for a major…
Earlier this month, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the reasonableness of a vertical price fixing agreement is not to be considered when determining whether such an agreement violates the Kansas Restraint of Trade Act (KRTA). Kansas Supreme Court precedent that called for a “reasonableness rubric”—a determination of whether a restraint was reasonable in view…
The Department of Justice Antitrust Division opened 90 merger investigations and filed 13 merger cases in Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 (October 1, 2010, to September 30, 2011). The uptick in enforcement activity over the past couple of years was in response to an increase in merger activity. Increase in HSR Filings According to recently released…
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta today rejected the Federal Trade Commission’s challenge to a patent litigation settlement between brand name and generic drug companies as an unlawful agreement not to compete in violation of Section 5(a) of the FTC Act. The FTC brought the case in 2009 against Solvay Pharmaceuticals and generic manufacturers…
Ah, the Spring Meeting. God I love it. Admittedly, the ABA Antitrust Section Spring Meeting, perhaps the profession’s preeminent event, is in some respects getting to be just a bit of a circus. What were once a handful of calm, early evening cocktail receptions in the bowels of the Marriott have grown into a deafening…
The federal district court in New York City should not have rejected allegations that a magazine wholesaler was driven out of business as a result of an antitrust conspiracy, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City decided earlier this week. On April 3, the appellate court vacated the lower court’s judgment granting a…
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the freshman Republican and Tea Party favorite, is only slightly more famous as the son of Representative Ron Paul than as the deliberate namesake of Ayn Rand. Last Thursday he introduced a genuine humdinger. Deploying that prowess for economic and legal analysis that may characterize many ophthalmologists, Senator Paul seems…
The next Term may see significant SCOTUS consideration of the state action immunity, the first such case since 1992. The decision below in the defendants’ favor was quite plainly wrong, and so it might also become only the second antitrust case in twenty years in which the Court has ruled for a plaintiff. That would…
In a recent letter to the House Transportation and Infrastructure leadership, all four sitting Federal Trade Commissioners joined in “grave concern” over that Committee’s plan to kick the agency out of the iconic, art deco building that FDR built for it nearly 75 years ago. The House Committee and its chairman intend to turn the…
