Author: Luis Blanquez Just weeks before our ABA antitrust panel on State Action Immunity takes place in Washington DC, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has allowed SmileDirectClub to proceed against the members of the California Dental Board for antitrust violations, rejecting the board’s immunity claim on active supervision grounds.…
Author: Aaron Gott The most complex, highest stakes litigation in the United States is class action antitrust litigation. And many antitrust cases are litigated as class actions because they involve claims by many consumers of the defendants’ products or services. If you are a defendant in a federal class action…
Author: Steven J. Cernak Apologies for the clickbait headline but all antitrust practitioners and policymakers should read Complexity-Minded Antitrust by Nicolas Petit and Thibault Schrepel. In their short article, the authors suggest a potentially radical new way to think about the competition that antitrust law is designed to protect. Written…
Author: Jon Cieslak The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division made waves recently by indicating that it is prepared to bring criminal charges for illegal monopolization, something it has not done in over 40 years. Speaking at the American Bar Association’s National Institute on White Collar Crime on March 2,…
Author: Jarod Bona I believe that Bitcoin is the enemy of tyranny and the greatest invention of the 21st century. Its detractors tend to either not understand Bitcoin or believe that the people are best when they are controlled and manipulated. Maybe that was a little hyperbolic? I don’t…
Author: Luis Blanquez It is time again for the ABA Antitrust Spring Meeting. In my case, this year is particularly special for two reasons. First, because the meeting is live. While the Zoom meetings have been extremely helpful, I think we (almost) all agree—online conferences just aren’t the same as…
As a regular reader of The Antitrust Attorney Blog, you understand that coordinating prices or allocating markets with your competitor is a terrible idea. Doing so is likely to lead to civil litigation and perhaps even criminal penalties. Price fixing and market allocation agreements are per se antitrust violations. That…
Authors: German Zakharov and Dmitry Domnin German Zakharov is a Partner of the Competition/Antitrust and Foreign Direct Investments Practices at ALRUD Law Firm. German supports clients on a wide range of antitrust issues: coordination of merger control transactions with Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation (FAS Russia), cartel investigations,…
Authors: Steven J. Cernak and Luis Blanquez As we have discussed in several recent posts, the FTC has made several changes to the merger antitrust review process. This month, the FTC made two more changes, one completely expected and one hinted at in other recent announcements. HSR Thresholds Updated…
Author: Jarod Bona The FTC filed an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook (now Meta Platforms Inc.). Judge James E. Boasberg dismissed it. The FTC then filed an amended complaint. And the same judge just denied Facebook’s motion to dismiss that complaint. The FTC alleges that Facebook has a longstanding monopoly in…