Competition

  • December 11, 2024

    FTC, DOJ Pull Antitrust Competitor Collaboration Guidelines

    The Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday that they are withdrawing Clinton-era antitrust guidelines for collaborations among competitors, saying they "no longer provide reliable guidance" about how collaborations are assessed.

  • December 11, 2024

    Big Tech, 'Censorship' Animate Trump FTC Picks

    President-elect Donald Trump's picks Tuesday to lead and join the Federal Trade Commission show he plans to continue Washington's focus on antitrust enforcement against major technology platforms, while also signaling a potential shift toward more populist Republican concerns alleging that Big Tech censors conservative voices.

  • December 11, 2024

    Grocery Store Rulings Back Enforcers' Merger Approach

    Federal and state enforcers scored key victories Tuesday with a pair of court rulings blocking the planned $24.6 billion merger between Kroger and Albertsons that largely adopted their allegations about the deal and rejected a proposal to unload nearly 600 stores to save it.

  • December 11, 2024

    High Court Urged To Take Up Web Scraping Trade Secret Spat

    An insurance agent is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up his challenge to an Eleventh Circuit ruling reviving software company Compulife's copyright claim against him, saying the high court should resolve an issue surrounding web scrapes of public information.

  • December 11, 2024

    Justices Question Affiliates' Liability In $47M TM Judgment

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday questioned why lower courts ordered affiliates of a real estate company to pay a $47 million trademark infringement judgment against it when they were not defendants, with Justice Clarence Thomas asking counsel for the prevailing party why they did not include the affiliates in the case.

  • December 11, 2024

    DOJ Tells Justices To Preserve Antitrust Probe Into NAR

    The U.S. Department of Justice told the U.S. Supreme Court that it made no commitment not to reopen its investigation into the National Association of Realtors as part of its 2020 consent decree with the company, urging the justices to reject the association's bid for a day before the high court.

  • December 11, 2024

    NASCAR Says Nothing Warrants Teams' Latest Injunction Bid

    NASCAR has urged a North Carolina federal judge to reject a renewed injunction bid by two racing teams that have accused the organization of monopolizing premier motorsport racing, arguing that despite "manufactured evidence," the teams still haven't made a showing of irreparable harm.

  • December 11, 2024

    Movie Producer Asks 11th Circ. To Reverse YouTube's IP Win

    A movie producer urged the Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday to revive his copyright claims against YouTube, arguing that the platform has a duty under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to locate additional infringing clips in its video library after receiving a takedown notice.

  • December 11, 2024

    Cross-Border Criminal Antitrust Trial Will Stay In Houston

    A case against a group of defendants accused of using violence to monopolize the cross-border sale of used cars from the U.S. into Central America must stay in Houston, a federal judge ruled this week.

  • December 11, 2024

    WordPress Parent Must Restore WP Engine's Access

    A California federal judge issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday restoring WP Engine's access to WordPress while the web hosting company pursues its antitrust allegations against WordPress parent Automattic and CEO Matthew Mullenweg, claiming it was blocked from the site after refusing to pay millions of dollars to Automattic.

  • December 11, 2024

    Nippon Offers $5K Bonuses To Ease US Steel Deal Concerns

    Nippon Steel Corp. has committed to providing $5,000 closing bonuses to employees of U.S. Steel in hopes of easing concerns about the controversial $14.9 billion merger between the two companies, which both the sitting and incoming president have said they oppose.

  • December 11, 2024

    Connell Foley Faces DQ Bid In Investment Firm's Bias Suit

    A Black-owned investment firm accusing BlackRock Inc. and New Jersey of squeezing it out of a lucrative contract are urging a federal court to disqualify Connell Foley LLP from representing the state, claiming the firm used privileged information from an attorney who has advised it throughout the dispute in a separate action.

  • December 11, 2024

    Antitrust Bar's 'Leading Light,' Ex-Morgan Lewis Chair Dies

    John Shenefield, a former chair of Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP who also served as an assistant attorney general in charge of the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division, died Monday at 85, according to a statement released by Morgan Lewis on Wednesday.

  • December 11, 2024

    Albertsons Sues Kroger In Chancery After Blocked Megadeal

    Grocery giant Albertsons, in a Wednesday lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery, said Kroger did not put forth its "best efforts" into getting their planned $24.6 billion megamerger cleared while also announcing official plans to nix the deal, moves that came just one day after two judges blocked the proposed acquisition.

  • December 10, 2024

    Robinhood Seeks Arb. For Remaining Meme Stock MDL Suits

    Stock trading platform Robinhood urged a Florida federal court to send to arbitration the seven remaining individual suits brought against it as part of a multidistrict litigation over the platform's decision to freeze trading in certain so-called meme stocks amid a social-media fueled run on shares of those issuers.

  • December 10, 2024

    Judge Won't Cull EpiPen Antitrust Action Against Mylan

    Mylan Pharmaceuticals didn't get the early exit it sought from litigation accusing it of working with Pfizer to inflate the price of the latter's popular auto-injecting emergency allergy medication EpiPen, as a Kansas federal judge has ruled the case must move on to discovery.

  • December 10, 2024

    Walgreens Sued For Docs After $107M FCA Deal With DOJ

    Walgreens shareholders have sued the company in Delaware seeking to inspect its books and records over its alleged long-running practice of billing government healthcare programs for prescriptions that were not dispensed, arguing Monday "there's more than a credible basis to infer evidence" of wrongdoing by the retailer.

  • December 10, 2024

    2nd Circ. Revives Antitrust Suit Over Instagram Algorithm

    A split Second Circuit Tuesday revived defunct app Phhhoto Inc.'s claims that Meta Platforms used anticompetitive means, including an algorithm for Instagram to suppress rival content, to squash its business, finding that Phhhoto adequately alleged Meta's fraudulent concealment of an anticompetitive scheme would stretch out the four-year statute of limitations.

  • December 10, 2024

    FCC Gives Church, Not University, Ill. Low Power FM Station

    A Pentecostal church has won a face-off with a Christian university over which one of them would get to build and run a new low power FM station in the northern Chicago suburbs after the Federal Communications Commission compared their applications and heard a complaint.

  • December 10, 2024

    Google Takes Aim At Ad Tech Antitrust Claims In States' Suit

    Google has blasted the lawsuit accusing it of illegally manipulating the advertising market, saying that Texas and the roughly dozen other states behind the litigation are "playing a shell game" in which they serially amend their complaints to "avoid the weaknesses of their antitrust claims."

  • December 10, 2024

    Tekion Accuses CDK Of Blocking Rival Dealership Software

    Tekion Corp. accused CDK Global LLC of monopolizing the market for auto dealership management software by holding its customers' data "hostage" to prevent them from switching to competing platforms.

  • December 10, 2024

    FinCEN Says CTA Still Constitutional In Post-Injunction Alert

    The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has alerted companies that they do not currently need to file so-called beneficial ownership information with the agency after a federal judge's nationwide preliminary injunction blocking the Corporate Transparency Act, though the bureau maintained that the law calling for such information is constitutional.

  • December 10, 2024

    Trump Taps Ferguson As FTC Chief, Kressin Atty To GOP Seat

    President-elect Donald Trump named current Federal Trade Commission member Andrew N. Ferguson to be its next chair Tuesday night while also picking Kressin Meador Powers LLC partner Mark Meador, a former deputy chief counsel to Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to round out the FTC as its third Republican member.

  • December 10, 2024

    FTC's Holyoak Says Chair OK With Some Cartels

    Federal Trade Commissioner Melissa Holyoak said Lina Khan, the agency's current chair, is suggesting enforcers ignore anticompetitive activity if it's not being committed by what she considers "dominant firms."

  • December 10, 2024

    AGs Urge FCC To Remove 'Pain' From Customer Service Calls

    A coalition of state attorneys general called Tuesday for the Federal Communications Commission to take some of the "pain" out of customer service calls in FCC-regulated industries from internet and voice calls to broadcast satellite.

Expert Analysis

  • Opinion

    Rental Price-Fixing Suit Against RealPage Doesn't Add Up

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    Recent government antitrust litigation against RealPage, alleging that the software company's algorithm for setting rental prices amounts to price-fixing, has failed to allege an actual conspiracy, and is an example of regulatory overreach that should be reined in, says Andrew Ketterer at Ketterer & Ketterer.

  • Use The Right Kind Of Feedback To Help Gen Z Attorneys

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    Generation Z associates bring unique perspectives and expectations to the workplace, so it’s imperative that supervising attorneys adapt their feedback approach in order to help young lawyers learn and grow — which is good for law firms, too, says Rachael Bosch at Fringe Professional Development.

  • Opinion

    Congress Can And Must Enact A Supreme Court Ethics Code

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    As public confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court dips to historic lows following reports raising conflict of interest concerns, Congress must exercise its constitutional power to enact a mandatory and enforceable code of ethics for the high court, says Muhammad Faridi, president of the New York City Bar Association.

  • Series

    The Pop Culture Docket: Justice Lebovits On Gilbert And Sullivan

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    Characters in the 19th century comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan break the rules of good lawyering by shamelessly throwing responsible critical thought to the wind, providing hilarious lessons for lawyers and judges on how to avoid a surfeit of traps and tribulations, say acting New York Supreme Court Justice Gerald Lebovits and law student Tara Scown.

  • To Report Or Not To Report Others' Export Control Violations

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    A recent Bureau of Industry and Security enforcement policy change grants cooperation credit to those that report violations of the Export Administration Regulations committed by others, but the benefits of doing so must be weighed against significant drawbacks, including the costs of preparing and submitting a report, says Megan Lew at Cravath.

  • With Esmark Case, SEC Returns Focus To Tender Offer Rules

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    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recent enforcement action against Esmark in connection with its failed bid to acquire U.S. Steel indicates the SEC's renewed attention under Rule 14e‑8 of the Exchange Act on offerors' financial resources as a measure of the veracity of their tender offer communications, say attorneys at MoFo.

  • HSR Amendments Intensify Merger Filing Burdens, Data Risk

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    The antitrust agencies' long-awaited changes to premerger notification rules under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act stand to significantly increase the time and cost involved in preparing an initial HSR notification, and will require more proactive attention to data issues, says Andrew Szwez at FTI Technology.

  • What's Inside Feds' Latest Bank Merger Review Proposals

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    Recent bank merger proposals from a trio of federal agencies highlight the need for banks looking to grow through acquisition to consider several key issues much earlier in the planning process than has historically been necessary, say attorneys at Simpson Thacher.

  • State Of The States' AI Legal Ethics Landscape

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    Over the past year, several state bar associations, as well as the American Bar Association, have released guidance on the ethical use of artificial intelligence in legal practice, all of which share overarching themes and some nuanced differences, say Eric Pacifici and Kevin Henderson at SMB Law Group.

  • How Biden Admin Has Used Antitrust Tools, And What's Next

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    The last four years have been marked by an aggressive whole-of-government approach to antitrust enforcement using a broad range of tools, and may result in lasting change regardless of the upcoming presidential election result, say attorneys at Norton Rose.

  • How BIS' Rule Seeks To Encourage More Voluntary Disclosure

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    Updated incentives, penalties and enforcement resources in the Bureau of Industry and Security's recently published final rule revising the Export Administration Regulations should help companies decide how to implement export control compliance programs and whether to disclose possible violations, say attorneys at Freshfields.

  • 8 Childhood Lessons That Can Help You Be A Better Attorney

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    A new school year is underway, marking a fitting time for attorneys to reflect on some fundamental life lessons from early childhood that offer a framework for problems that no legal textbook can solve, say Chris Gismondi and Chris Campbell at DLA Piper.

  • Challenge To Ill. Card Fee Law Explores Compliance Hurdles

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    A recent federal lawsuit challenging an Illinois law that will soon forbid electronic payment networks from charging fees for processing the tax and tip portions of card transactions, fleshes out the glaring compliance challenges and exposure risks financial institutions must be ready to face next summer, says Martin Kiernan at Amundsen Davis.

  • Harris Unlikely To Shelve Biden Admin's Food Antitrust Stance

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    A look at Vice President Kamala Harris' past record, including her actions as California attorney general, shows why practitioners should prepare for continued aggressive antitrust enforcement, particularly in the food and grocery industries, if Harris wins the presidential election, says Steve Vieux at Bartko.

  • Opinion

    This Election, We Need To Talk About Court Process

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    In recent decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has markedly transformed judicial processes — from summary judgment standards to notice pleadings — which has, in turn, affected individuals’ substantive rights, and we need to consider how the upcoming presidential election may continue this pattern, says Reuben Guttman at Guttman Buschner.

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