It is becoming increasingly common for companies to set prices for their products automatically using algorithms. One recent study found evidence of more than 500 sellers using algorithmic pricing on Amazon marketplace (see here). The Commission’s Preliminary Report on the E-commerce Sector Inquiry also reported use of automatic price adjustments (see paragraph 552). There are…
By Robert E. Connolly [1] and Masayuki Atsumi [2] The fugitive disentitlement doctrine is an equitable doctrine under which a court has the discretion to decline to consider a petition of a defendant if that defendant does not appear before the court. “The paradigmatic object of the doctrine is the convicted criminal who flees while…
Earlier this year, Libratus – an artificial intelligence system developed by Carnegie Mellon University – conquered four of the world’s top professional poker players in a Head’s-Up No-Limit Texas Hold’em tournament (one of the most complicated forms of poker). [1] This might not sound all that surprising to those recalling Gary Kasparov’s defeat at the…
The Federal Trade Commission’s new Economic Liberty Task Force, launched by FTC Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen, is an important step that addresses concerns from this blogger and others that the FTC’s commissioners should do more to head off the competitive restraints imposed by certain state licensing requirements. The move is consistent with recent efforts by…
What light does the European Commission’s much anticipated 130-page decision, published Monday, 19 December 2016, shed on the Commission’s case and the parties’ prospects for appeal? In the second of a series of short blogs on the Apple case, here’s a quick-look review and comment on the Commission’s decision. We know now that the Commission’s…
On January 25, 2017, the Trump administration designated Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen as Acting Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. Because Ohlhausen has been a Commissioner since 2012 (and held other FTC positions before that), she certainly left plenty of tea leaves for antitrust practitioners to read as they tried to guess how she would act…
As 2016 comes to a close, a number of important trends in antitrust have emerged that will likely have lasting effects on competition law enforcement in the coming years. A new administration will put its mark on federal antitrust policy, but the following five developments witnessed at the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and FTC…
There has been a lot of speculation about what impact the election of Donald J. Trump will have on antitrust enforcement over the next four to eight years. Some commenters have suggested that Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail signals dramatic changes. Candidate Trump spoke of blocking AT&T Inc.’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Inc….
Long-stalled efforts proposed by some federal lawmakers to bring “reform” to the FTC will likely be reintroduced in the 115th Congress. With a Republican majority in both the House of Representatives and Senate, and President Donald J. Trump in the White House, measures that could not get sufficient support in in the current Congress and…
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court denied review of a handful of petitions in antitrust cases. Since that time, new petitions for certiorari have been filed in competition law cases with the hope that the High Court will add them to its docket. At this point, only one antitrust case is set to be…
