The recent decision in Coalition for a Level Playing Field, LLC v. Autozone, Inc., 2010-2 Trade Cas. ¶ 77,182 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 16, 2010) was a bit surprising to me. The essence of the case was that a group of smaller purchasers of auto parts (“jobbers”) felt that the big competitors were getting illegally discriminatory…
The federal district court in Sacramento, California, has refused to dismiss an antitrust claim alleging that SK Foods L.P.—a now-defunct food products distributor—conspired with others to eliminate competition in the market for processed tomato products. The private action brought by competitors of SK Foods parallels a closely-watched federal probe of anticompetitive conduct in the industry….
The 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines give increased treatment to a topic that was not well developed in previous Guidelines – namely, mergers that threaten to restrain innovation. The 1968 Guidelines had contained a statement on innovation to the effect that: the Department has used Section 7 to prevent mergers which may diminish long-run possibilities of…
It has been more than a decade since the U.S. Justice Department has brought an antitrust challenge to enjoin the use of “most favored nation” clauses in the health care industry. Many of the more recent, civil non-merger actions against industry participants have targeted alleged boycotts and fee-setting arrangements by providers. Today, the U.S. Justice…
The Federal Trade Commission has issued a press release announcing the appointment of Theodore L. Banks, Esq., to monitor Coca-Cola Company’s compliance with the FTC order settling charges that the company’s acquisition of Coca-Cola Enterprises, its largest North American bottler, would be anticompetitive. The order requires Coca-Cola to restrict its access to confidential competitive business…
The Department of Justice and seven states have filed a civil antitrust suit against the three largest credit and charge card transaction networks in the United States, challenging rules that allegedly restrict price competition at the point of sale. MasterCard and Visa have agreed to settle the charges; however, American Express announced that it had…
The FTC’s efforts to substantially revise the Horizontal Merger Guidelines for the first time since 1992 were among the recent agency accomplishments touted by FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz in remarks delivered last week to attendees of Georgetown Law School’s Fourth Annual Global Antitrust Enforcement Symposium and Fordham Competition Law Institute’s International Antitrust Law & Policy…
Are U.S. antitrust laws suited to deal with the challenges presented by rapidly evolving digital industries? That was the question posed at a September 16 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Courts and Competition Policy. The subcommittee heard testimony from six witnesses, including a top Federal Trade Commission official, a consultant to…
The Federal Trade Commission recently suffered a significant setback in its merger enforcement efforts when the federal district court in Minneapolis rejected an action brought by the agency along with the State of Minnesota against global pharmaceutical company Lundbeck, Inc. In December 2008, the FTC and Minnesota filed a complaint against Ovation Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which…
In response to an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission into suspicious customer reviews posted on an online store’s website, a public relations firm and its sole owner agreed to remove the reviews from the website and refrain from misrepresenting their status in customer reviews. The pubic relations firm provided sales, marketing, and public relations…
