Author: Steven Cernak U.S. antitrust laws make exceptions for certain actions by employees and employers in the collective bargaining context. The limits of those exemptions are not perfectly clear. Earlier this month, a district court seemed to clarify and expand the so-called nonstatutory exemption for activities by employers. Labor Exemption…
Author: Luis Blanquez Congress didn’t set out to redesign money with the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. Yet that is where the debate has now landed. The bill—intended to end regulation‑by‑enforcement and draw a workable line between SEC and CFTC authority—has stalled because stablecoins force a choice the status quo…
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…
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…