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Competition
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June 18, 2013
EU High Court Says Legal Advice No Antitrust Defense
The European Union's highest court ruled Tuesday that a group of Austrian freight forwarders couldn't avoid antitrust punishment by claiming they had relied on advice from their lawyers or a national competition court that their joint pricing efforts didn't violate the bloc's cartel ban.
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June 18, 2013
5 Arguments To Look For In Pay-For-Delay Cases
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that pay-for-delay deals may violate antitrust law, it largely left it up to the lower courts to figure out how to make the traditional rule-of-reason analysis work for the pharmaceutical patent settlements. Here are a few arguments to look out for as trial courts struggle to weigh the pros and cons of the controversial agreements.
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June 18, 2013
Paul Hastings Snags Top Securities Atty From Fried Frank
Paul Hastings LLP on Tuesday said it has nabbed a former head of Fried Frank’s securities and shareholder litigation practice — who also comes with real estate litigation, antitrust and white collar expertise — to join the firm as a partner in its New York office.
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June 18, 2013
Barnes & Noble Exec Backs Apple's E-Book Defense
A Barnes & Noble Inc. executive testified Tuesday in New York that the retailer considered implementing a business model that would have let publishers raise digital book prices before Apple Inc. did so, supporting Apple's defense in the final week of an antitrust trial over alleged e-book price-fixing.
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June 18, 2013
Tesoro To Shed Assets To Close $355M Chevron Pipeline Buy
The Federal Trade Commission said Monday it would allow Tesoro Corp. to move forward with its $355 million purchase of certain Chevron Pipe Line Co. assets after Tesoro agreed to sell a petroleum terminal in Boise, Idaho, to allay the regulator's antitrust worries.
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June 18, 2013
Ex-FTC Chief Leibowitz Joins Davis Polk's Antitrust Practice
Former Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz, who helped guide the agency to a favorable U.S. Supreme Court decision on pay-for-delay and prepare it for a host of looming consumer privacy fights, said Monday he has joined Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP's Washington antitrust and transactional practice as a partner.
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June 18, 2013
Cancer Testing Co. Blasts False Claims Suit As 'Speculation'
Cancer diagnostic company Caris Life Sciences Inc. told a Texas federal court Monday that allegations that it overbilled Medicare and gave hospitals kickbacks were based on "mistaken assumptions and speculation" from former employees who couldn't possibly have known about any false claims.
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June 18, 2013
San Jose Says MLB Conspired Against Oakland A's Relocation
San Jose, Calif., officials sued Major League Baseball in California federal court Tuesday, claiming MLB harmed it to the tune of millions of dollars by stalling on an owners' vote on moving the Oakland Athletics to their city and challenging baseball's exemption to federal antitrust laws.
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June 18, 2013
Akin Gump Atty's Emails Irrelevant In MLB Row, Yankees Say
The New York Yankees on Monday told a federal judge considering an antitrust case against Major League Baseball over sports broadcasts that the Yankees' president, also an Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP attorney, should not have to turn over evidence.
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June 18, 2013
Ex-Im Bank Must Explain $3.4B Air India Loan, DC Circ. Says
The D.C. Circuit ruled Wednesday that the Export-Import Bank of the United States didn't properly explain its procedure for measuring whether billions in loans for foreign airlines to buy Boeing Co. jets would harm American competitors like Delta Air Lines Inc.
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June 18, 2013
Ex-TigerDirect Prez Charged In $230M Kickback Scheme
The former president of consumer electronics seller TigerDirect Inc. has been charged with mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering for allegedly steering $230 million into companies that paid him bribes and kickbacks, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday in New York federal court.
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June 18, 2013
2nd Circ. Asked To Revive $1B Microsoft Antitrust Suit
Computer-sharing software maker MiniFrame Ltd. on Friday urged the Second Circuit to reinstate a $1 billion antitrust suit against Microsoft Corp., saying that changes to licensing rules for Windows operating systems harmed competition in the market for computer-sharing software.
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June 18, 2013
Sharp Targets Philips Over Alleged CRT Price-Fixing
Sharp Corp. on Monday lodged allegations in California federal court that Koninklijke Philips NV took part in a price-fixing scheme along with other makers of cathode ray tubes, claims similar to those leveled against CRT companies in a broader multidistrict litigation.
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June 18, 2013
UK Charges Ex-UBS Trader In Libor Scandal
U.K. officials on Tuesday charged a former UBS AG and Citigroup Inc. trader for his alleged role in rigging the London Interbank Offer Rate, the latest announced development in efforts by U.S. and European authorities to unravel the widespread scandal.
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June 17, 2013
Lowenstein Lands Competition Pro To Lead Antitrust Group
Lowenstein Sandler PC's New York office has landed a former Crowell & Moring LLC competition specialist to chair its antitrust and trade regulation practice and join its technology group, the firm announced Monday.
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June 17, 2013
Arnold & Porter Partner To Head FTC's Competition Bureau
The Federal Trade Commission announced Monday that the partner leading Arnold & Porter LLP's U.S. antitrust practice has been appointed director of the FTC bureau that investigates the economic impact of mergers and acquisitions and stifles anti-competitive conduct, and that it had tapped a new head for the Bureau of Consumer Protection.
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June 17, 2013
Pay-For-Delay Suits Get New Life Following High Court Ruling
The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling Monday allowing antitrust challenges to reverse payment patent settlements breathed new life into lawsuits targeting pharmaceutical companies over pay-for-delay deals, with most cases likely to survive early dismissal bids as trial judges apply traditional antitrust analysis, experts say.
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June 17, 2013
High Court Pay-For-Delay Ruling To Revamp Drug Patent Deals
The U.S. Supreme Court's Monday ruling allowing antitrust challenges to pay-for-delay settlements will reshape how drugmakers settle patent disputes, attorneys say, since the court stressed that a generics maker will have to do more than agree to stay off the market in order for a payment from a branded company to be legal.
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June 17, 2013
FTC Fought Long, Hard Battle Against Pay-For-Delay Deals
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that so-called pay-for-delay settlements between branded drugmakers and generic rivals could face antitrust scrutiny, it represented a huge win for the Federal Trade Commission in its decadelong, roller-coaster fight to outlaw the arrangements.
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June 17, 2013
Big Pharma’s Legal Bill To Take Hit From Pay-For-Delay Ruling
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Monday requiring stepped-up scrutiny of so-called pay-for-delay deals will force the pharmaceutical industry to spend more money litigating patent suits and devising settlements that won’t be viewed as anti-competitive, experts say.
Expert Analysis
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UK Joint Ventures: Sanctions And Corruption Risks
What should be at the forefront of the mind of any in-house counsel or compliance officer whose company operates in joint ventures is section 7 of the U.K. Bribery Act, which holds that an organization does not even need to be aware of corrupt conduct in order to be guilty of an offense, say attorneys with Dechert LLP.
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How EU Competition Law Applies To Data Collection Issues
So far, the European Commission has not reviewed a case where the accumulation or the manipulation of data was used to allegedly hamper competition. But the "essential facilities" case law developed by the commission for the last 20 years with respect to nonmaterial facilities should enable it to take a balanced approach in evaluating these cases, say Philippe Rincazaux and David Dubois of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.
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High Court Brings Economics Back To Pay-For-Delay Analysis
In its much-anticipated decision in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court rejected both the “scope of the patent” approach to analysis of pay-for-delay deals and the FTC’s proposed presumption of illegality, putting the question squarely back where it belongs — on rigorous analysis of the economic effects of the settlement agreement at issue, say Sumanth Addanki, Alan Daskin and Christine Meyer of NERA Economic Consulting.
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How To Get A Pass When A Corruption Problem Occurs
Companies that can demonstrate a truly proactive approach to anti-corruption compliance — both before a problem arises and after an allegation is received — can help themselves obtain the much-desired “declination" from the U.S. government. While a declination can never be guaranteed, companies should take steps now to maximize their options, say attorneys with Paul Hastings LLP.
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How Far Patent Licensors Can Go In US, China And Korea
International patent licensing can be challenging. In the U.S., most licensing arrangements are analyzed under the rule of reason, which can create uncertainty. In China, there are multiple sources of law and a lack of precedent. And in Korea, legality turns on whether the restraint is reasonably related to a legitimate business justification, says Koren Wong-Ervin, a consultant in the Office of International Affairs at the Federal Trade Commission.
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Debate Over New GTLD Applications Won't End Soon
Throughout the generic top-level domain application process, applications for generic and legally defined terms have been the source of significant debate, and new developments show that the debate may continue — possibly even after the process ends, says Heather Nolan of InfoLawGroup LLP.
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Now Open: Floodgates To Price Advertisement Cases
The Ninth Circuit's recent opinion in Hinojos v. Kohl’s definitely hurts retailers who have advertised "original" prices that were never actually in place and makes them vulnerable to being hit with a class action. This decision may also be used by plaintiffs to bring more unfair competition claims, say attorneys with Sedgwick LLP.
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Class Arbitration Is Back In Arbitrators’ Hands
Arbitrators can still interpret contracts pretty much any way they want, according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter. The holding should come as no great surprise as it reflects decades of federal arbitration law, yet the unanimous ruling is a surprise, given what preceded it, says Christopher King of Homer Bonner Jacobs.
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Cable Networks, Distributors Face Tough Carriage Disputes
The recent decisions in Comcast Cable Communications LLC v. Federal Communications Commission and Sky Angel U.S. LLC v. National Cable Satellite Corporation underscore the rigorous review carriage dispute claims receive and provide insight into how such claims may be treated by courts and the FCC in the future, says Burt Braverman of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.
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3 Recent Trends In US Merger Enforcement
A high-level numerical review of the data found in the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice's annual reports on merger filings and enforcement activities over the last 10 years reveals several distinct characteristics of each agency’s merger enforcement activities, says Warren Rosborough of McDermott Will & Emery LLP.