Antitrust Insights and Analysis

FTC Challenge Pushes Schick Deal to Acquire Harry’s Off The Razor’s Edge

Edgewell Personal Care Co., the parent company of Schick, has abandoned its plans to purchase Harry’s Razors just days after the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint to block the merger earlier this month. In May 2019, Edgewell entered into an agreement to purchase Harry’s Inc., a start-up shaving company, for approximately $1.37 billion in stock and cash. The two companies compete in the “wet shave”...

The Antitrust Week In Review

Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following. Sutter Health to Pay $575 Million to Settle Antitrust Lawsuit.  Sutter Health, the large hospital system in Northern California, said Friday that it had agreed to pay $575 million to settle claims of anti-competitive behavior brought by the California state attorney general as well as unions and...

Trillium Argues Oregon Hospitals Conspired to Prevent Insurer’s Entry into State-Regulated Medicaid Markets

Three major hospital systems are accused of taking advantage of state regulation of healthcare to snuff out competition in a novel antitrust case filed in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon. Trillium Community Health Plan, a subsidiary of the Centene Corporation, alleges numerous entities and individuals, including three prominent hospital systems—Legacy Health, Providence Health &...

Congress Steps Up Its Oversight of Competition in Intellectual Property Licensing

By Seth D. Greenstein Congress is staking out new markers in its oversight of intellectual property licensing as Senators and Representatives grapple with a changing technological landscape. The House Judiciary Committee’s ongoing bipartisan investigation into competition in digital markets—including requests for information to Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple—garnered significant press attention...

DOJ Tells Congress Criminal Prosecution of No-Poach Agreements is Still a “High Priority”

By J. Wyatt Fore Although federal antitrust regulators have yet to file criminal charges against no-poach agreements, such prosecutions may be forthcoming, according to testimony on Capitol Hill earlier this week. On Tuesday, the Antitrust Subcommittee of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Competition in Labor Markets, which included an interesting exchange about the federal government’s...

Net Neutrality Setback in Mozilla Opens the Door for State Regulation

By J. Wyatt Fore Although the cause of net neutrality suffered a setback at the federal level earlier this month with the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Mozilla Corporation v. FCC, that decision also opens the door for state regulators to step in. The D.C. Circuit generally upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s (“FCC”) January 2018 order in In the Matter of Restoring...

DOJ Agreement to Use Binding Arbitration to Resolve Merger Dispute Could Herald New Approach in Antitrust Enforcement

By Alex Cohen Federal antitrust enforcers may be increasingly looking to arbitrators—instead of federal courts—to be the arbiters of competition law if a new approach in enforcement takes hold. This approach was highlighted on September 4, 2019, when the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio...

The Ninth Circuit’s Decision in hiQ v. LinkedIn: Data Scraping May Have a Future, But for How Long?

By Seth D. Greenstein Do companies that gather public information have an obligation to make that information available en masse to would-be competitors?  Do competitors have a right to access those companies’ websites to get that information?  And do the interests in a free and open Internet prevail over the privacy of millions of citizens whose information is being “scraped” for commercial purposes they...

A Rerun That Deserves to be Cancelled: DirectTV-DISH Merger Would Still Likely be Anticompetitive After All These Years

By Matthew L. Cantor In 2002, Constantine Cannon’s founder, Lloyd Constantine, and I helped convince 23 State Attorneys General (both Democrats and Republicans), the Bush 43 Antitrust Division, and the FCC to block the proposed acquisition of DirecTV, Inc. by EchoStar Communications (which owns and operates the DISH network).  See Read More