Maureen K. Ohlhausen, a Washington, D.C. attorney and former Federal Trade Commission staffer, will likely be returning to the agency as a Commissioner. Yesterday evening, the White House announced President Barack Obama’s intention to nominate Ohlhausen to fill the position currently held by Commissioner William E. Kovacic. Kovacic’s term on the five-member Commission expires in…
Yesterday, I released a paper at the Center for American Progress on the Obama antitrust record. In the paper, entitled “Reinvigorating Antitrust Enforcement: The Obama Administration’s Progressive Direction on Competition Law and Policy in Challenging Economic Times,” I assesses the Obama administration’s antitrust enforcement up to now and offer recommendations to strengthen that enforcement going forward. …
Earlier today, the U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis vacated an injunction lifting the National Football League’s “lockout” of its players. The divided appellate court, just five days after hearing oral argument on the matter, concluded that, because the parties were involved in a labor dispute, the Norris-LaGuardia Act prohibited the federal district court…
Some of Google’s critics analogize Google’s conduct today to that of Microsoft’s during its heyday of the 1990s: Like Microsoft, Google is big. Like Microsoft, Google has hampered the opportunities of rivals. And like Microsoft, Google has abused its purported dominant position in online search by prominently displaying its own products in search results and excluding competitors. This analogy may…
Today Google announced that the FTC had opened an investigation of its search practices. This is an issue I have given considerable thought to. In an article I just released—Internet Search Competition: Where’s the Beef?—I explain that while Google is the “target du jour in the antitrust community,” efforts to bring antitrust enforcement against Google…
The following is an excerpt of an article that appeared in The Computer & Internet Lawyer, Volume 28, Number 6, June 2011. Never ask for whom the bell tolls. Computer and Internet lawyers should be following developments in the law affecting the rights of innovator and generic pharmaceutical manufacturers to settle their Hatch-Waxman patent infringement…
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia earlier this week reaffirmed the “bright-line” rule limiting federal antitrust standing to direct purchasers. The court upheld dismissal (CCH 2010-1 Trade Cases ¶77,043) of an antitrust action brought by a small Pennsylvania hospital, which sought to represent members of a proposed class, composed of other hospitals, clinics, and…
How far can a competitor go in an effort to convince a local government to block a potential rival from setting up shop in its area without running afoul of the antitrust laws? Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled that a hospital was shielded from antitrust liability for allegedly making misrepresentations…
Some commentators are pretty alarmed over the Federal Trade Commission’s ruling earlier this year denying antitrust immunity for a North Carolina regulatory board’s outlawry of teeth-whitening by non-dentists. What has some of them using words like “epic,” and what has the state regulator-defendant virtually threatening secession from the Union (just take a look at the…
Nasdaq OMX Group, Inc. and IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) have withdrawn their proposal to acquire NYSE Euronext in the face of antitrust objections from the U.S. Department of Justice. The Justice Department issued a statement on May 16, saying that it had informed the companies that it would file an antitrust lawsuit to block the deal. Under…
