Author: Luis Blanquez On 5 February 2026, Germany’s competition authority, the Bundeskartellamt, announced a landmark ruling prohibiting Amazon from continuing practices that influenced how independent sellers priced their products on the German Amazon Marketplace. The authority also ordered Amazon to disgorge €59 million in economic benefits that it determined were…
Author: Steven Madoff As an avid runner, I am always looking for the perfect protein bar. A great protein bar must find the balance between taste and texture on the one hand and nutritional value and low-caloric content on the other. Usually, a certain amount of fat is needed for…
Authors: Steven Cernak, Luis Blanquez and Kristen Harris. On January 14, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued its usual annual announcement to increase the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act thresholds. The 2026 thresholds will take effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. HSR requires the parties to submit certain information…
Authors: Steven Cernak and Luis Blanquez Section 8 of the Clayton Act prohibits certain interlocking directorates between competing corporations. But while the prohibition has been around since 1914, most antitrust lawyers pay little attention to it, partly because companies can quickly resolve any issues voluntarily. We first brought Section…
Author: Luis Blanquez The first part of this article discussed the Dai v. SAS Inst. Inc case, where plaintiffs alleged the inference of a horizontal agreement by the group of Hotel Operators using IDeaS’s software. There, the Northern District of California again confirmed the difficult standard for algorithmic pricing at…
Author: Aaron Gott In my last post, I discussed how California’s newly enacted AB 1340—which allows independent contractor gig drivers to form a “union” and engage in sectoral bargaining against rideshare companies such as Uber and Lyft—likely does not provide the federal antitrust immunity that it purports to provide. This…
Author: Aaron Gott California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed AB 1340 into law, a bill that purports to give more than 800,000 California rideshare drivers the right to unionize and bargain collectively over pay and working conditions. Some are celebrating the statute as a political and policy breakthrough. In press…
Author: Luis Blanquez Summer is over and everyone is back at the office. If you’ve been enjoying some days off, you’ve probably missed what happened recently in the algorithmic-pricing space in the US. And, as always, we had a very busy summer here. First, there is a new case from…
Author: Ruth Glaeser The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed an injunction that would have allowed University of Wisconsin–Madison football player Nyzier Fourqurean to play a fifth season, ruling that his antitrust allegations failed to clearly define the relevant market. Background from the Seventh Circuit’s Opinion UW-Madison footballer Nyzier Fourqurean…
Author: Steven Cernak This blog has discussed dynamic competition several times recently, such as here and here. Very roughly, the idea is that innovation is the big driver of wealth creation and happens in a longer, more complex way than captured by neo-classical economics and some antitrust precedent. As previewed…