Author: Jarod Bona Business can be brutal. Let’s say you have this business. Maybe you started it recently, or maybe you’ve been around for some time. But, in any event, you offer a good product or service. Customers like you and you are making money. This is—for many—the American…
Articles Posted in Competition
Can Antitrust Law Save Innovative Ideas and Freedom of Speech?
Author: Jarod Bona We are all connected. When something happens anywhere, we know about it everywhere. If someone has a great idea, they can tell everyone about it, right away. These connections create incredible value. We as a society can take the best ideas and build upon them. Information as a…
Marketplace Bullying and Bona Law’s Antitrust Lawsuit in the Cement and Ready Mix Concrete Markets
Bona Law filed an antitrust lawsuit on behalf of our client in the Northern District of Georgia alleging antitrust violations in the cement and ready mix concrete markets. More on that later. But first I am going to tell you a fictional story about your nine-year-old son and his first…
The Antitrust Laws Do Not Allow Real Estate Agents to Jointly Fix or Set Prices or Commissions
If you have sold or purchased a home recently, you might be under the impression that real estate commissions—the price to engage a real estate broker—are fixed or otherwise set by law in different geographic markets. They aren’t—to do so amounts to price-fixing, which is a per se violation of…
Active Supervision and State Action Immunity for Licensing Boards Controlled by Market Participants
In early 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court held in North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC that the “active state supervision” prong of the state-action immunity from antitrust liability test applied to state licensing boards controlled by market participants. You can read my analysis of the decision here.…
Texas Federal Court Acts for Teladoc in Antitrust Case Against State Medical Board
It is easier to succeed in business without competition than with it. And if you are used to practicing your profession in a particular way, it is quite uncomfortable when new approaches develop that undercut your business. (As an aside, Aaron Gott and I just published an article for CIO…
Can You Make Money From an Antitrust Hedge Fund?
So here’s an idea. Let me know what you think: A hedge fund or other investment vehicle centered on antitrust analysis. I’ll explain. As you might know, I am an antitrust attorney. And I write a blog on antitrust and competition law. So, as you may expect, I follow antitrust…
Monopoly, Antitrust, and Making Money
You may have noticed Peter Thiel’s provocatively titled article “Competition is for Losers” in the Review section of last weekend’s Wall Street Journal. Since we extol the virtues of competition here at The Antitrust Attorney Blog, perhaps you are bracing yourself for me to rip into his article? No way!…
The Antitrust Law Journal, Patent Assertion Entities, and Politics
As you know, I am a big fan of the Antitrust Law Journal, which is produced by the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Law Section. It is the journal where antitrust lawyering meets antitrust economics and academics. I like to hang out at this intersection. A couple weeks ago, another issue…
Is the FTC a Libertarian Government Agency?
Probably not. But any government agency that files an amicus brief supporting an Institute for Justice case challenging anticompetitive state action deserves some libertarian props. If I had to name a favorite government agency, I would pick the FTC. I don’t agree with many of their positions, of course, and…