Region: United States of America

Playoff baseball is here. While the Washington Nationals are not on the hunt to defend their crown, it is the Federal Trade Commission that finds itself challenging the umpire’s strike zone. A ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Wednesday took a whack at the commission’s disgorgement powers. It might not be too late for the agency to make a call to the bullpen and see if House antitrust subcommittee chair David Cicilline can draw up some new legislation cementing some monetary equitable relief powers before today’s hearing.

01 October 2020

It’s a Federal Trade Commission-heavy briefing from us today. A Missouri federal judge sided with the agency in its suit to block Peabody Energy’s proposed joint venture with Arch Coal. And on the East Coast, a federal court in Philadelphia resumed a preliminary injunction hearing over the FTC’s challenge to Jefferson Health’s acquisition of Albert Einstein Healthcare Network.

30 September 2020

Jefferson Health’s chief executive Stephen Klasko on Tuesday denounced the Federal Trade Commission’s “eagerness” to block his company’s acquisition of Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, arguing that the traditional definition of a hospital is “rapidly changing”.

30 September 2020

“As we frequently are in the Northern District of California, we’re in a new world,” said Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers yesterday when discussing Apple’s closed iOS ecosystem – and the potential competition issues it may have caused. “They don’t call us the Wild West for nothing.” The California federal judge is presiding over Epic Games’ lawsuit against Apple, which appears likely to go to trial next July. New frontiers in antitrust apparently await us.

29 September 2020

A federal judge on Monday criticised Epic Games’ alleged relevant market definition in its antitrust lawsuit against Apple and questioned whether the game developer’s case would be able to address the potential lack of competition for iPhone apps.

29 September 2020

Federal Trade Commission chair Joseph Simons and the agency’s Democratic members voted in favour of asking the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to take a second look at its Qualcomm ruling. Has Simons been cheering for the case from the beginning or is he merely concerned with controversial aspects of the ruling – such as the finding that harms to customers are not “anticompetitive in the antitrust sense”? That is not clear. Either way, the FTC claimed the panel got it “exactly backwards”.

28 September 2020

There’s never a good time for an antitrust injury, but now seems like as good a time as any for those harmed by anticompetitive behaviour to seek their vindication. Former Paul Weiss partner Jonathan Kanter is starting his own plaintiff-focused antitrust boutique, while customers of a Florida oncology network will no doubt soon become aware that its founder has been charged with one count of conspiring to allocate markets for chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

25 September 2020

Google antitrust lawyers and lobbyists must be busy these days. Republicans further voiced their concern about an “anti-conservative bias” on digital platforms at the White House yesterday. The Department of Justice is also expected to file an antitrust complaint against the tech company as soon as this month. We’re looking out for updates.

24 September 2020

Cinemark’s Century Theatres secured its third major victory in its 13-year-old antitrust dispute with Flagship Theatres in California earlier this month. The Norton Rose Fulbright team who advised the company spoke to GCR USA about the case and the significance of the court’s decision.

24 September 2020

Antitrust officials from the US and EU yesterday praised the catchiness of the term “killer acquisition”. “I think it is a great phrase that obviously has captured a certain zeitgeist within the antitrust community,” said Ian Conner, director of the Federal Trade Commission’s competition bureau, before expressing concern over the broad application of the expression. But Conner also added that the most important contribution the phrase may have had over the past year is raising the profile of acquisitions of nascent competitors, flagging “the difficulties in challenging those transactions under the potential competition doctrine.”

23 September 2020