Author: Aaron Gott There are a lot of lessons you can learn from Wonka. It’s a story about how ingenuity, determination, selflessness, and teamwork can overcome the oppressive adversity of a system that serves entrenched interests. But it’s also a story about a chocolate cartel. And that offers its own…
Author: Luis Blanquez What is Bid-rigging? The DOJ describes bid rigging as an agreement among competitors as to who will submit the most competitive bid and who won’t, i.e., who should win and who should lose, in a competitive bidding situation. Typically, bid rigging occurs when a purchaser solicits bids…
Author: Molly Donovan In an opinion written by Judge Easterbrook, and a major win for per se no-poach claims, the Seventh Circuit has vacated a district court’s dismissal of a Sherman Act, Section 1 no-poach claim against McDonald’s. The case involves clauses that McDonald’s formerly included, as standard language, in…
Author: Jarod Bona Law school exams are all about issue spotting. Sure, after you spot the issue, you must describe the elements and apply them correctly. But the important skill is, in fact, issue spotting. In the real world, you can look up a claim’s elements; in fact, you should…
Authors: Jon Cieslak & Molly Donovan Two individuals and four of their corporate entities pleaded guilty to an antitrust conspiracy to fix the prices of DVDs and Blu-Rays sold on Amazon’s platform during the 2016-2019 time period. According to the plea agreements, the defendants “engaged in discussions, transmitted across state…
Author: Jarod Bona Do you feel paranoid? Maybe everyone really is conspiring against you? If they are competitors with each other—that is, if they have a horizontal relationship—they may even be committing a per se antitrust violation. A group boycott occurs when two or more persons or entities conspire to…
Author: Jarod Bona You can buy and sell products or services in many different ways in a particular market. For example, if you want to purchase some whey protein powder, you can walk into a store, go to the protein or smoothie-ingredient section, examine the prices of the different brands,…
Author: Steven J. Cernak The FTC’s challenge of Altria’s investment into its e-cigarette competitor JUUL Labs, Inc. (JLI) already raised interesting antitrust and administrative law issues: Did the parties’ discussions of FTC compliance during merger negotiations create an unreasonable agreement? Are the structure and procedures of the FTC constitutional? Recently,…
Author: Jarod Bona Yes, sometimes “tying” violates the antitrust laws. Whether you arrive at the tying-arrangement issue from the perspective of the person tying, the person buying the tied products, or the person competing with the person tying, you should know when the antitrust laws forbid the practice. Even kids may…
Author: Jarod Bona Like life, sometimes antitrust conspiracies are complicated. Not everything always fits into a neat little package. An articulate soundbite or an attractive infograph isn’t necessarily enough to explain the reality of what is going on. The paradigm example of an antitrust conspiracy is the smoke-filled room of…