Competition

  • 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.

  • December 10, 2024

    ESPN, Fox Blast DOJ 'Formalistic Distinction' In Fubo Case

    ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery pressed the Second Circuit to upend a lower court injunction against their sports-only streaming service, taking particular aim at U.S. Department of Justice arguments asserting the sports giants can't claim they have a right to refuse dealing with rivals after joining forces.

Expert Analysis

  • Look For Flags On Expert Claims After Sunday Ticket Reversal

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    A California federal judge’s recent reversal of a jury’s $4.7 billion antitrust verdict in the NFL Sunday Ticket case indicates that litigants may be inclined to challenge expert testimony admissibility under Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, and that judges may increasingly accept such challenges, say attorneys at Kutak Rock.

  • Takeaways From Virginia's $2B Trade Secrets Verdict Reversal

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    The Virginia Court of Appeals' recent reversal of the $2 billion damages award in Pegasystems v. Appian underscores the claimant's burden to show damages causation and highlights how an evidentiary ruling could lead to reversible error, say John Lanham and Kamran Jamil at Morrison Foerster.

  • UK Judgment Could Change Anti-Money Laundering Regimes

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    After the Court of Appeal of England and Wales' determination that criminal property remains criminal property in the hands of its purchaser even if purchased at market value, many businesses could face a new or heightened risk of prosecution for criminality in their supply chains and related money laundering offenses, say lawyers at Macfarlanes.

  • How Justices Upended The Administrative Procedure Act

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    In its recent Loper Bright, Corner Post and Jarkesy decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court fundamentally changed the Administrative Procedure Act in ways that undermine Congress and the executive branch, shift power to the judiciary, curtail public and business input, and create great uncertainty, say Alene Taber and Beth Hummer at Hanson Bridgett.

  • Jarkesy May Thwart Consumer Agencies' Civil Penalty Power

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy not only implicates future SEC administrative adjudications, but those of other agencies that operate similarly — and may stymie regulators' efforts to levy civil monetary penalties in a range of consumer protection enforcement actions, say attorneys at Holland & Knight.

  • Mirror, Mirror On The Wall, Is My Counterclaim Bound To Fall?

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    A Pennsylvania federal court’s recent dismissal of the defendants’ counterclaims in Morgan v. Noss should remind attorneys to avoid the temptation to repackage a claim’s facts and law into a mirror-image counterclaim, as this approach will often result in a waste of time and resources, says Matthew Selmasska at Kaufman Dolowich.

  • Bank M&A Continues To Lag Amid Regulatory Ambiguity

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    Bank M&A activity in the first half of 2024 continued to be lower than in prior years, as the industry is recovering from the 2023 bank failures, and regulatory and macroeconomic conditions have not otherwise been prime for deals, say Robert Azarow and Amber Hay at Arnold & Porter.

  • FTC's Drug Middlemen Probe Highlights Ongoing Scrutiny

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    The Federal Trade Commission's interim staff report on its inquiry into pharmacy benefit managers suggests that the industry will remain under an enforcement microscope for the foreseeable future due to concerns about how PBMs affect drug costs and accessibility, say attorneys at Arnold & Porter.

  • Series

    Playing Dungeons & Dragons Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Playing Dungeons & Dragons – a tabletop role-playing game – helped pave the way for my legal career by providing me with foundational skills such as persuasion and team building, says Derrick Carman at Robins Kaplan.

  • Considerations When Using Publicly Available Data To Train AI

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    To maximize the benefits and mitigate the risks of using publicly available data to train artificial intelligence models, companies should maintain a balance between openness and protection, and consider certain best practices, says Michael Cole at Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America.

  • Parsing NJ Court's Rationale For Denying Lipitor Class Cert.

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    A New Jersey federal court's recent Lipitor rulings granting summary judgment and denying motions for class certification for two plaintiff classes offer insight into the level of rigorous analysis required by both parties and their experts to satisfy the requirements of class certification, says Catia Twal at Edgeworth Economics.

  • Unpacking The Latest FTC Guidance On Multilevel Marketing

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    Branko Jovanovic and Monica Zhong at Edgeworth Economics discuss the Federal Trade Commission's recent advice for multilevel marketers on how MLMs should approach their income and earnings reports, including participants costs, typical proceeds and distributor gains.

  • 3 Leadership Practices For A More Supportive Firm Culture

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    Traditional leadership styles frequently amplify the inherent pressures of legal work, but a few simple, time-neutral strategies can strengthen the skills and confidence of employees and foster a more collaborative culture, while supporting individual growth and contribution to organizational goals, says Benjamin Grimes at BKG Leadership.

  • E-Discovery Quarterly: Rulings On Hyperlinked Documents

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    Recent rulings show that counsel should engage in early discussions with clients regarding the potential of hyperlinked documents in electronically stored information, which will allow for more deliberate negotiation of any agreements regarding the scope of discovery, say attorneys at Sidley.

  • Loper Bright Limits Federal Agencies' Ability To Alter Course

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision to dismantle Chevron deference also effectively overrules its 2005 decision in National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X, greatly diminishing agencies' ability to change regulatory course from one administration to the next, says Steven Gordon at Holland & Knight.

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