Antitrust Today

Mastercard’s Digital Fee Hike Means Double Trouble for Merchants

By Owen Glist As part of the annual spring ritual of interchange increases and new network fees, Mastercard has announced that it is more than doubling its “Digital Enablement Fee.”  This hefty price hike raises both the cost of digital transactions and antitrust concerns. Mastercard’s Digital Enablement Fee is essentially a tax the network imposes for “enabling” online transactions, also known as...

The Antitrust Week In Review

Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.   Bidding War for Spirit Could Undercut Power of Four Big Airlines.  When the dust settled on a big round of airline consolidation nearly a decade ago, four large companies came to dominate the industry. A new merger scramble could challenge that cozy arrangement. A brewing fight over the future of...

Antitrust Division Urges NLRB to Protect Competition in the Gig Economy by Redefining “Employee”

By Sarah Bayer, Janice Johnson, and Margaux Poueymirou The rise of the “gig worker” is creating novel and significant issues that are not going to be resolved without a lot of heavy lifting by both antitrust enforcers and labor regulators. The Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) recently dealt with one of these issues—how to protect competition in the “gig...

The Antitrust Week In Review

Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.   U.S. drops price-fixing charges against chicken executives after mistrials.  The U.S. Justice Department asked a federal court in Denver to drop price-fixing charges filed against five executives of chicken producing companies after two mistrials in the case focused on competition in the $65 billion...

Antitrust Matters Episode 4: The Whistleblower

Antitrust Matters provides engaging and timely conversations about competition policy in the digital age. Antitrust has always mattered to consumers and businesses, and to antitrust lawyers and economists, but today it also is in the political and public discourse more than ever. From the prices we pay for food, travel, financial services, payments to the way we interact daily using digital apps and platforms,...

Quick Facts About Antitrust Bills Introduced in Congress (Part 2 – Bills in the Senate Targeting “Big Tech”)

By Matthew Moore and Taline Sahakian The national debate over how far to regulate the technology industry is resulting in some potentially significant bills that may very well pass Congress this year. In Part 1 of this series on antitrust bills being considered by Congress, we began our review of Senate bills that seek to reform antitrust enforcement in significant ways.  In this post, we provide a rundown of...

Court Rules Work Product Doctrine Can Pre-Exist Attorney Client Relationship

By Alysia Solow and Alan Schwartz Plaintiffs’ counsel and their clients can rely on the attorney work product doctrine to shield investigations conducted in anticipation of filing a lawsuit—even if the attorney conducted the investigation before being retained by any client. That is the essence of the holding of Magistrate Judge Gabriel Fuentes in his recent decision In Re Turkey Antitrust Litigation, No....

Tracking Tech Giants: An Overview of Antitrust Engagements in the Digital Domain

The reasons why large digital technology firms sometimes cause concerns about unfair competition, and a summary of EU and UK investigations and litigation in response to those concerns

By Stephen Critchley, Agnieszka Szewczyk and Helena Lindgren The European Commission has long talked of the need to regulate the behaviour of large digital technology companies, and to harmonise these regulations between Member...

The Antitrust Week In Review

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

 

U.S. antitrust regulators seek more data from Activision, Microsoft on planned deal.  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has sought additional data from Activision Blizzard Inc and Microsoft Corp related to the antitrust review of their deal, the games developer said in a regulatory filing. Microsoft in...

Rare “Single-Brand Market” Case Against Apple Clears Initial Hurdle in Court

  By David A. Scupp   Antitrust claims alleging that a single brand constitutes a market may be rare, but they can still pack a punch as Apple Inc. found out this week.   On Monday, Judge Jeffrey White of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted in part and denied in part Apple’s motion to dismiss AliveCor’s antitrust claims in AliveCor, Inc. v. Apple Inc.  Judge...