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Competition
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December 18, 2024
State AGs, Generic Cos. Fight Over Price-Fixing Trial Order
A contingent of state-level enforcers told a Connecticut federal court there is no need to reconsider prioritizing a sprawling generic drug price-fixing case that involves more than 100 medications over a narrower case the drugmakers are asking to have tried first.
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December 18, 2024
DOJ Wants Misconduct Allegations Hushed In Used Car Case
The U.S. Department of Justice wants to bar defendants accused of violently controlling the cross-border transport of American used cars into Central America from raising accusations of misconduct by nonwitness law enforcement officers to the jury without prior approval from the Texas federal judge overseeing the case.
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December 18, 2024
Judge Wants To Know If Colo. Kroger Merger Fight Is Moot
A Colorado state judge wants to know whether two recent decisions blocking the proposed $24.6 billion merger of The Kroger Co. and Albertsons Cos. Inc. has mooted Attorney General Phillip J. Weiser's challenge to the transaction, according to a briefing plan approved Tuesday.
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December 18, 2024
Michael Jordan's NASCAR Team Clinches Win In Antitrust Suit
NASCAR can't enforce an antitrust release in its racing contracts for the 2025 season, a North Carolina federal judge ruled Wednesday, finding two teams suing the organization have shown they are likely to succeed on at least part of their claim accusing it of monopolizing the sport.
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December 18, 2024
FCC Asked To Place Conditions On Skydance-Paramount Deal
Paramount Global's $2.4 billion plan to merge with Skydance Media has gained another critic, a right-leaning nonprofit law firm that wants the Federal Communications Commission to refuse to approve the tie-up without placing conditions on Paramount's CBS.
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December 18, 2024
Judge Eyes Limits To Medical Device Co.'s Poaching Verdict
A Boston federal judge on Wednesday considered interpreting twin $5 million jury awards against medical device sales employees as a subset of the $15 million in damages awarded against their employer in a rival company's poaching case.
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December 18, 2024
1st-Ever Arb. Antitrust Casino Class Certified In Shuffler Suit
Scientific Games' successor Light & Wonder Inc. must battle arbitration from customers accusing the gambling company of monopolizing the automatic card shuffler market using fraudulently obtained patents, after an arbitrator said there's no need to individually assess the arbitration provisions of all roughly 112 class members.
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December 18, 2024
FTC Wants Express Scripts' Defamation Suit Tossed
The Federal Trade Commission told a Missouri federal court that Express Scripts Inc. has no basis to challenge an interim agency report that only offered "qualified conclusions" from an ongoing study about how pharmacy benefit managers affect prescription drug prices.
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December 18, 2024
EU Court Rejects Latest Challenge To Portugal's Tax Clawback
A European court rejected a Brazilian-based company's challenge Wednesday to a European Commission ruling that Portugal must claw back tax breaks provided to companies with no local economic activity because that ran counter to commission-approved policies.
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December 18, 2024
The Biggest Trademark Decisions Of 2024
The Pennsylvania State University emerged victorious in arguably the most closely watched trademark trial of the year against an online retailer that sold merchandise bearing historic Penn State marks, and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an attorney's attempt to register "Trump Too Small" as a trademark. Here are Law360's picks for the biggest trademark decisions of 2024.
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December 18, 2024
Hagens Berman Says Apple, Amazon Doc Demand Is Off Base
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP is firing back against Apple and Amazon's bid to force the turnover of texts and emails with a client who disappeared from a putative class action against the tech giants, calling the spat an opportunistic attack "based on a fiction."
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December 18, 2024
Class Counsel In NCAA-NIL Suits Seek $500M-Plus In Fees
The attorneys who represent the athletes in two name, image and likeness class actions that were settled with the NCAA have requested more than half a billion dollars total in fees and costs, citing the "substantial risks and complex issues" involved.
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December 18, 2024
Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca Taps Ex-DOJ Official As Policy Chair
Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca LLP has hired a former senior U.S. Department of Justice official and Capitol Hill pro as the leader of its newly formed public policy and legislative affairs practice.
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December 18, 2024
UK Probes Tiles Biz's £9M Buy Of Troubled Rival's Assets
The antitrust authority said Wednesday that it has launched a formal probe into the completed £9 million ($11.5 million) acquisition by tiling retail chain Topps Tiles of some assets of troubled rival CTD Tiles, which went into administration in August.
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December 17, 2024
Tubi Says Keller Postman Kept Its Clients In The Dark
Most of the people named in now-dropped arbitration demands filed by Keller Postman LLC against streaming service Tubi didn't know what the claims were or even that the firm purported to represent them, Tubi has told a Washington, D.C., federal judge.
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December 17, 2024
Canadian Gets 2 Years For Stealing Secrets Tesla Bought
A New York federal judge on Monday sentenced a Canadian businessman to two years in prison after he pled guilty to charges he helped his Chinese business partner use trade secrets from his former employer that was acquired by Tesla in 2019.
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December 17, 2024
Quinn Emanuel, Keller Postman Want To Lead Live Nation Suit
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP and Keller Postman LLC attorneys told a California federal court that they are best suited to represent proposed classes of consumers accusing Live Nation and Ticketmaster of monopolizing the ticketing services space, saying they "developed the heart" of the consumers' claims.
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December 17, 2024
Telecom Seeks Win In DC Schools Network Bidding Challenge
A D.C. federal judge on Tuesday scrutinized Allied Telecom’s claims that the D.C. public school system flouted federal law by tapping one its own agencies to provide network services, questioning whether the preemption claims are the Northern Virginia telecom’s only avenue for bringing its challenge.
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December 17, 2024
Google-Apple Collusion Plaintiff Asks 9th Circ. To Revive Suit
A California crane operator training school asked the Ninth Circuit on Monday to revive its case accusing Google of paying Apple to refrain from developing its own search engine in light of a recent Washington, D.C., federal judge's decision that Google monopolizes the search market.
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December 17, 2024
FTC, Meta Fight Over Monopolization Trial Limits
Meta Platforms and the FTC are butting heads about how to structure the trial they are hurtling toward in April in D.C. federal court over the agency's monopolization claims, trading barbs Tuesday and trying to make their cases for how they think the multiweek trial should look.
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December 17, 2024
Sandoz Cuts $275M Deal For More Price-Fixing Claims
Swiss drugmaker Sandoz said Tuesday it has reached a $275 million settlement to end claims from consumers, insurers and others in the sprawling multidistrict litigation over alleged price-fixing in the generic-drug industry.
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December 17, 2024
DOJ Antitrust Division Head Kanter Stepping Down Friday
The head of the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, Jonathan Kanter, announced his imminent departure Tuesday, leaving the agency after a little over three years and with a legacy of dramatically ramped-up monopolization enforcement, an extremely low tolerance for potentially problematic transactions and more aggressive criminal enforcement.
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December 17, 2024
Mountain West Conference Hit With New Suit Over Exit Fees
Two schools sued the Mountain West Conference on Tuesday, alleging its punishing exit fees are stifling their ability to join the rival Pac-12 Conference, echoing Pac-12's antitrust case against Mountain West over supposed efforts to stifle Pac-12 recruitment.
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December 17, 2024
T-Mobile-UScellular Link Will Help Consumers, Think Tank Says
A free-market think tank is urging the federal government to clear the way for T-Mobile's $4.4 billion purchase of UScellular's wireless operations, saying in a new report that because the smaller UScellular poses no real competitive threat to T-Mobile, the deal could carry significant consumer benefits through increased competition.
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December 17, 2024
Visa Says 'Contradictory' Debit Card Market Dooms DOJ Suit
Visa Inc. formally asked a New York federal judge Monday to nix the U.S. Department of Justice monopolization lawsuit accusing it of paying off would-be debit network rivals and penalizing the use of alternate payment systems, arguing the government cannot mix-and-match its way into claiming the company holds a dominant market share.
Expert Analysis
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A Look At State AGs Supermarket Antitrust Enforcement Push
The ongoing antitrust intervention by state attorneys general in the proposed Kroger and Albertsons merger suggests that states are straying from a Federal Trade Commission follow-on strategy in the supermarket space, which involved joining federal investigations or lawsuits and settling for the same divestment remedies, say attorneys at Troutman Pepper.
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The Show Must Go On: Noncompete Uncertainty In Film, TV
The Federal Trade Commission has taken action to ban noncompetes while the entertainment industry is in the midst of a massive shift away from traditional media, so it is important for studio heads and content owners alike to understand the fate of the rule and their options going forward, say Christopher Chatham and Douglas Smith at Manatt.
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Series
Serving In The National Guard Makes Me A Better Lawyer
My ongoing military experience as a judge advocate general in the National Guard has shaped me as a person and a lawyer, teaching me the importance of embracing confidence, balance and teamwork in both my Army and civilian roles, says Danielle Aymond at Baker Donelson.
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Big Business May Come To Rue The Post-Administrative State
Many have framed the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions overturning Chevron deference and extending the window to challenge regulations as big wins for big business, but sand in the gears of agency rulemaking may be a double-edged sword, creating prolonged uncertainty that impedes businesses’ ability to plan for the future, says Todd Baker at Columbia University.
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A Midyear Forecast: Tailwinds Expected For Atty Hourly Rates
Hourly rates for partners, associates and support staff continued to rise in the first half of this year, and this growth shows no signs of slowing for the rest of 2024 and into next year, driven in part by the return of mergers and acquisitions and the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence, says Chuck Chandler at Valeo Partners.
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Opinion
Cell Tech Patent Holdup Is Stalling Automaker Innovation
Courts and Congress should seek to stem anticompetitive harm caused by standard-essential patent holders squeezing automakers with unfairly high royalties for cellular connectivity technology, says Charles Haake at Alliance for Automotive Innovation.
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Mitigating Risks Amid 10-Year Sanctions Enforcement Window
In response to recent legislation, which doubles the statute of limitations for actions related to certain U.S. sanctions and provides regulators greater opportunity to investigate possible violations, companies should take specific steps to account for the increased civil and criminal enforcement risk, say attorneys at Freshfields.
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Opinion
States Should Loosen Law Firm Ownership Restrictions
Despite growing buzz, normalized nonlawyer ownership of law firms is a distant prospect, so the legal community should focus first on liberalizing state restrictions on attorney and firm purchases of practices, which would bolster succession planning and improve access to justice, says Michael Di Gennaro at The Law Practice Exchange.
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FBI Raid Signals Growing Criminal Enforcement Of Algorithms
The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division's increased willingness to pursue the use of algorithmic pricing as a potential criminal violation means that companies need to understand the software solutions they employ and stay abreast of antitrust best practices when contracting with providers, say attorneys at Rule Garza.
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Series
Solving Puzzles Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Tackling daily puzzles — like Wordle, KenKen and Connections — has bolstered my intellectual property litigation practice by helping me to exercise different mental skills, acknowledge minor but important details, and build and reinforce good habits, says Roy Wepner at Kaplan Breyer.
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What UK Digital Markets Act Will Mean For Competition Law
The new Digital Markets Act’s reforms will strengthen the Competition and Markets Authority's investigatory and enforcement powers across its full remit of merger control and antitrust investigations, representing a seismic shift in the U.K. competition and consumer law landscape, say lawyers at Travers Smith.
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Texas Ethics Opinion Flags Hazards Of Unauthorized Practice
The Texas Professional Ethics Committee's recently issued proposed opinion finding that in-house counsel providing legal services to the company's clients constitutes the unauthorized practice of law is a valuable clarification given that a UPL violation — a misdemeanor in most states — carries high stakes, say Hilary Gerzhoy and Julienne Pasichow at HWG.
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Realtor Settlement May Create New Antitrust Pitfalls
Following a recent antitrust settlement between the National Association of Realtors and home sellers, practices are set to change and the increased competition may benefit both brokers and homebuyers, but the loss of the customary method of buyer broker compensation could lead to new antitrust concerns, says Colin Ahler at Snell & Wilmer.
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In Memoriam: The Modern Administrative State
On June 28, the modern administrative state, where courts deferred to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes, died when the U.S. Supreme Court overruled its previous decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council — but it is survived by many cases decided under the Chevron framework, say Joseph Schaeffer and Jessica Deyoe at Babst Calland.
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Preparing For CFPB 'Junk Fee' Push Into Mortgage Industry
As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau considers expanding its "junk fee" initiative into mortgage closing costs, mortgage lenders and third parties must develop plans now that anticipate potential rulemaking or enforcement activity in this space, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.