The Antitrust Week In Review

Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.

Qualcomm kicks off crucial fight with U.S. antitrust regulator. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case accusing Qualcomm Inc. of abusing a monopoly on mobile chip technology kicked off in a California courtroom on Friday in a trial whose outcome could have a major impact on the smartphone industry. If the government prevails in the 10-day, non-jury trial before U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, in San Jose, California, Qualcomm could be forced to change its practices for licensing a trove of patents to manufacturers like iPhone maker Apple Inc. Apple will be closely watching the FTC case, as it has its own pending lawsuit making similar claims against Qualcomm.

Facebook Data Scandals Stoke Criticism That a Privacy Watchdog Too Rarely Bites. Last spring, soon after Facebook acknowledged that the data of tens of millions of its users had improperly been obtained by the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, a top enforcement official at the Federal Trade Commission drafted a memo about the prospect of disciplining the social network.
Lawmakers, consumer advocates and even former commission officials were clamoring for tough action against Facebook, arguing that it had violated an earlier F.T.C. consent decree barring it from misleading users about how their information was shared.

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