Antitrust Insights and Analysis

Congress Steps Up Its Oversight of Competition in Intellectual Property Licensing

Posted 11/12/19

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”

Posted 10/31/19

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

Posted 10/18/19

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

Posted 10/3/19

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?

Posted 09/27/19

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

Posted 09/25/19

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

States Take Charge In Seeking to Block Merger of T-Mobile and Sprint

Posted 06/25/19
By James J. Kovacs

The unusual effort by more than a dozen state attorneys general to stop T-Mobile’s acquisition of its rival Sprint is perhaps most noteworthy for the antitrust enforcer that is not in the courtroom—the U.S. Department of Justice. As he was scheduling trial for October 7, 2019, United States District Court Judge Victor Marrero said what was on everyone’s mind: “The elephant not in the room is the Justice...

Tagged in: Antitrust Enforcement, Antitrust Litigation,

The First Blockchain Antitrust Case. Or Is It?

Posted 05/29/19
By Kristian Soltes

Legal professionals paying close attention to the still nascent world of blockchains and cyptocurrencies are following what is considered to be the first antitrust case involving cryptocurrencies. For enthusiasts, United American Corp. v. Bitmain, Inc. involves the self-described inventor of bitcoin on one side, the operator of bitcoin.com on the other side, the world’s largest mining pools, and the Bitcoin Cash...

Tagged in: Antitrust Litigation,

The FTC’s Victory in the Qualcomm Case Highlights the Big Competition-Policy Issue at the Center of the DOJ’s and FTC’s Tiny Spat

Posted 05/22/19
By Ankur Kapoor

A San Francisco federal court ruled yesterday that Qualcomm’s decades-long “no license, no chips” business practices violated federal antitrust law. The case promises to be a watershed moment for what it means for tech companies to license standard-essential patents on a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (“FRAND”) basis. Judge Lucy Koh’s decision is also likely to be a watershed moment for what...

Tagged in: Antitrust Enforcement, Antitrust Litigation,

Will Apple’s Crackdown On Third-Party Apps Continue With iOS 13?

Posted 05/16/19
By Grant Petrosyan

Over the past year, Apple has removed or imposed restrictions on at least 11 of the 17 most downloaded screen-time and parental-control apps on the iOS App Store. Apple began its “crackdown” on this category of apps around the same time it released iOS 12, which introduced Apple’s own screen-time tracking tool, Screen Time. Next month, Apple will debut iOS 13. Bloomberg, CNET, and others have already provided...

Tagged in: Antitrust Enforcement, Antitrust Litigation, International Competition Issues,

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