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Competition
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May 16, 2013
Athena Blasts Allergan's Competition Claims In Eyelash Fight
Athena Cosmetics Inc. urged the Federal Circuit on Tuesday to reverse a lower court decision banning it from selling its eyelash conditioner, saying the ruling in favor of drugmaker Allergan Inc., which makes its own eyelash growth product, could drastically change the drug and cosmetic marketing industry.
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May 16, 2013
GM Unit Faces Spanish Antitrust Probe Over Spare Parts
Spain's antitrust watchdog said Thursday it would investigate General Motors Co.'s Opel unit to determine if the car company restrained competition on spare auto parts supplied to dealers and authorized mechanics.
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May 15, 2013
Businessman Denies Blocking FCPA Probe Into Mining Co.
A French businessman linked to BSG Resources Ltd. pled not guilty Wednesday to charges that he obstructed a U.S. investigation into bribes the mining company allegedly paid to secure mining rights in Guinea.
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May 15, 2013
Damages Against Dow Upped To $1.2B In Urethane Suit
A Kansas federal court on Wednesday entered judgment in favor of a class of urethane foam buyers who won a $400 million jury verdict against The Dow Chemical Co. in a price-fixing dispute in February, trebling the damages to $1.2 billion.
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May 15, 2013
Wall Street To FCPA Enforcers: Bring It On
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prosecutors have Wall Street in their crosshairs after suing two traders at New York broker-dealer Direct Access Partners LLC last week, but experts say the hyper-vigilant industry is ready for any clampdown.
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May 15, 2013
EU Court To Hear Telefonica's €152M Antitrust Fine Appeal
The European Union's highest court will weigh Telefonica SA's bid to overturn its €151.9 million ($195.6 million) antitrust fine Thursday, with the Spanish telecommunications giant set to argue that the margin squeeze penalty violated its property rights for its broadband network.
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May 15, 2013
Obama's 1st Term Rulemaking Rate Soars By Bush's Mark
President Barack Obama has pushed through a significantly higher number of major rules over the last four years than former President George W. Bush did during his own first term, according to a report by the research arm of Congress.
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May 15, 2013
Foxconn Beats Antitrust Suit Over USB Technology
A New York federal judge on Tuesday tossed a lawsuit alleging China-based Foxconn International Inc. stifled competitors by flouting licensing terms for standard-essential patents covering USB 3.0 connectors, ruling the alleged misconduct fell outside the scope of U.S. antitrust laws.
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May 15, 2013
Hitachi, LG, Others Released From LCD Price-Fixing Suits
A California federal judge on Wednesday approved stipulated dismissals releasing Hitachi Ltd. from antitrust allegations lodged by two Sony Corp. units and LG Display, AU Optronics Corp. and others from a related suit in multidistrict litigation over alleged price-fixing of liquid crystal display panels.
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May 15, 2013
FTC Wins Restraining Order In $195M Phoebe Merger Fight
A Georgia federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked Phoebe Putney Health System Inc. from further integrating its operations with a nearby rival, a ruling that comes in the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust challenge of the now-consummated $195 million acquisition.
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May 15, 2013
FDA Tells DC Circ. KV Drug Compounding Wasn't A Priority
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration told the D.C. Circuit on Monday that it acted fully in its discretion when it determined cracking down on competition for bankrupt drugmaker KV Pharmaceutical Co.'s prenatal medicine Makena was not a priority, and asked the court to stay out of the dispute.
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May 15, 2013
Ex-Pa. County Officials Want Corruption Convictions Axed
Attorneys for two former Pennsylvania county commissioners found guilty in a bribery and extortion scheme in June 2011 told the Third Circuit on Wednesday that flaws in the government’s indictment and an improper cross-examination of one of the defendants warranted a new trial in the case.
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May 15, 2013
Apple Blasts 'Ringmaster' Label In E-Book Price-Fixing Case
The U.S. Department of Justice described Apple Inc. in documents released Tuesday as the “ringmaster” of an alleged conspiracy with major publishers to fix e-book prices, but Apple fired back, saying it had actually acted independently, in the interest of its own business.
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May 15, 2013
FTC Commissioner Defends Ending Google Probe
Federal Trade Commissioner Maureen K. Ohlhausen on Wednesday defended the commission's decision to close its search bias investigation of Google Inc., saying the search giant's algorithms and practices had a negligible antitrust effect and that an agency remedy wouldn't have been effective.
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May 15, 2013
Q&A With Squire Sanders' Brady Dugan
Both prosecutors and defense counsel could benefit from more guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice regarding how it calculates affected commerce in a cartel matter, says Brady Dugan, a partner with Squire Sanders LLP specializing in criminal and civil antitrust.
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May 14, 2013
Chunghwa Exec Says Feds' Price-Fixing Suit Is Time-Barred
Attorneys for a former Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd. executive living in Taiwan, outside the reach of U.S. prosecutors, urged a California federal judge Tuesday to dismiss an indictment alleging he conspired to fix prices on television color display tubes, arguing that prosecutors missed statutory deadlines to bring the charges.
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May 14, 2013
EU Raids BP, Statoil Over Benchmark Rate Manipulation
The European Commission raided BP PLC and Statoil on Tuesday based on suspicions that the energy giants might have colluded to manipulate benchmark oil and biofuel rates used in derivatives and commodity sales.
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May 14, 2013
Delta Asks DC Circ. To Shut Down $3.4B Air India Loan
Delta Air Lines Inc. on Tuesday urged the D.C. Circuit to revoke $3.4 billion in loans guaranteed by the Export-Import Bank of the U.S. that allow Air India Ltd. to purchase 30 planes, saying the bank ignored the effects of the added route competition on U.S. airlines.
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May 14, 2013
Lipitor Pay-For-Delay Suit Returned To W.Va. State Court
A federal judge on Monday sent to state court West Virginia's allegations that Pfizer Inc. entered an anti-competitive settlement of a patent dispute with a company seeking to make generic Lipitor, ruling the suit did not arise under federal law.
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May 14, 2013
Dell Accuses Toshiba, Sony Of Fixing Prices For Disk Drives
Dell Inc. on Monday struck Toshiba Corp., Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and other major electronics companies with an antitrust lawsuit in Texas federal court, accusing them of engaging in a wide-ranging conspiracy to fix prices in the market for optical disk drives.
Expert Analysis
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FERC's Unclear Guidance On Horizontal Market Power
In declining to authorize a transaction among MACH Gen LLC, Saddle Mountain Power LLC and New Harquahala Generating Company LLC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has provided some guidance regarding when the transfer of control is sufficient to mitigate the failure of FERC’s horizontal market power screens but with little clarity, say attorneys with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.
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'Hot' Documents Do Not Tell The Whole Story In Antitrust
A recent Law360 Expert Analysis piece used the complaint against the Bazaarvoice Inc./PowerReviews Inc. merger to illustrate the importance of “hot” documents. While these documents are always helpful to catch the interest of the press, a busy judge or an unsophisticated jury, antitrust cases are usually resolved on economics and facts, not snippets from emails or musings from corporate MBAs, says David Balto, a former policy director of the Federal Trade Commission.
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Antitrust Lessons From Interplay Of Hospitals, Doc Groups
Administrators of hospitals and medical specialty groups have much to learn from four recent cases brought by the federal antitrust regulators and private parties claiming violations of the Sherman and Clayton Acts. Not paying sufficient attention to antitrust perception can create unwelcome responses, say Steve Murphy and Les Levinson of Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP.
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Inside The FTC's Take On Generic Access To Branded Drugs
The Federal Trade Commission has entered previously uncharted ground by filing an amicus brief in Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd. v. Apotex Inc., which addresses a branded pharmaceutical company's restrictions on the sale and distribution of branded drugs to generics. The regulatory background is an important part of why the FTC is weighing in to what otherwise would appear to be a simple private dispute, says David Leichtman of Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi LLP.
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The Economic Underpinnings Of Comcast V. Behrend
The implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent antitrust ruling in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend suggest a stronger emphasis going forward on the role of rigorous empirical testing in the class certification phase related to both impact and damages analyses, say Laila Haider and John Johnson of Edgeworth Economics LLC.
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NCAA Win Will Impact Future Antitrust Claims Against NCAA
The NCAA recently obtained dismissal of a claim that certain rules governing athletic grants-in-aid violated the antitrust laws. The Indiana federal judge's ruling is of key interest as it highlights the issue of permissible market categorizations of student-athletes in future antitrust claims, say Robert Kidwell and Tyrone Thomas of Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC.
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No Defense Reimbursement For Insurers In Wash.
In Washington state, insurance carriers are between a rock and a hard place with an anvil overhead. The rock: coverage by waiver or estoppel if rights are not reserved. The hard place: the inability to obtain reimbursement for providing a prophylactic defense. The anvil: potential bad faith liability. In light of National Surety Corp. v. Immunex Corp., that seems to be where the Washington State Supreme Court wants them, says Louis Castoria of Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP.
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Standard Fire Will Uniquely Impact Antitrust Class Actions
Although Standard Fire Insurance Co. v. Knowles was not an antitrust case, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision will affect antitrust class action cases because the removal of state law claims to federal court for coordinated proceedings in a single court is critical to an antitrust defendant’s ability to avoid duplicative damage awards and to reduce the notoriously high costs of antitrust discovery, say Paula Render and Jeffrey LeVee of Jones Day.
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How Lawyers Benefit From Early Neutral Evaluation
Early neutral evaluation usually asks a retired judge to consider one party’s case, as if preparing to rule on summary judgment or presiding over a bench trial. Effective evaluation can supply a reality check on a case — it gives the lawyer the gift of seeing the case as others see it, says James Rosenbaum, a panelist with JAMS and former U.S. district judge for the District of Minnesota.
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FERC Decision Sheds Light On The Importance Of Mitigation
A recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission decision marks a rare instance of FERC flatly rejecting a proposed sale of a power plant under Section 203 of the Federal Power Act and provides some insight as to what FERC considers to be sufficient mitigation when a proposed transaction raises horizontal market power concerns, say attorneys with Latham & Watkins LLP.