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Cable Net NeutralityAn article in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye: “FCC Questions AT&T Over Investment Pause: Company Freezes Plans to Build Ultrafast Internet Service.” The reason for the pause is the FCC’s flirtation with the idea of net neutrality.

A government policy of net neutrality would require internet service providers—like broadband companies—to enable access to all content and applications no matter the source and without additional charges for particular products or websites.

This debate is in the news lately because of the issue of whether cable companies that control broadband should be able to charge extra to content companies like Netflix that make greater use of the broadband, or to offer content companies a faster and better route that isn’t available to other companies (for a price, of course). The FCC has been debating this policy, and the issue is wrapped up in the FCC and DOJ’s review of the Comcast-Time Warner merger. President Obama recently came out in support of net neutrality, which adds pressure on the FCC to adopt the policy.

So where does AT&T fit into this?

They are in the process of gaining approval to purchase the satellite company, Direct TV, which is a competitor to the broadband services from cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner. After President Obama issued a statement supporting net neutrality, AT&T announced that it would freeze plans to build ultrafast Internet service in light of new uncertainty around the government’s net-neutrality policy.

Here is the problem: Net neutrality turns broadband service into a more commoditized business. If you are in the business, you must charge everyone equally—the content providers that is—which means there is substantially less room for innovation.

Right now the cable companies offering broadband have substantial market power because they offer the fastest broadband to customers in each locality. Substantial resources over time have built-up the necessary framework and connections to offer broadband service to customers.

When a business becomes commoditized, there are fewer aspects of competition. That is, the product is substantially the same no matter where you get it, so price becomes the biggest area of competition. Businesses then compete by innovating on how to reduce costs and building economies of scale, which usually reduces costs. They do not, however, innovate on improving the quality of the product because, by definition, the product is the same.

If the FCC were to require a net-neutrality policy, it would remove substantial areas of potential competition between the entrenched monopolist broadband (i.e. cable) companies and potential competitors. So competition would primarily be based on cost reduction, which usually comes down to economies of scale.

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White TeethThe trade association necessitates a delicate balancing act between anticompetitive conduct condemned by the antitrust laws and pro-competitive information-sharing and best practices that ultimately help consumers.

Trade associations should have antitrust policies and should consistently consult with an antitrust attorney. Antitrust law reserves its greatest scorn to the horizontal agreements—the deals between and among competitors. And a trade association is, by definition, an entity created to bring these competitors together.

Competition Policy International (CPI) published an Antitrust Chronicle this week about trade associations and industry information sharing and I was fortunate that they invited me to publish an article in this issue. My article is called “’But the Bridge Will Fall’ is Not a Valid Defense to an Antitrust Lawsuit.” I discuss one of my favorite Supreme Court cases of all time: National Society of Professional Engineers v. United States.

There are a couple of ways that trade associations—and, really, any group of industry competitors—harm competition and risk antitrust liability. The first and most obvious concern is that the competitors will conspire against their customers or suppliers (don’t forget that buying conspiracies may be illegal too).

For example, a group of competitors may reach agreements on price, output, geographic or product and service markets, contractual terms, etc. These are per se antitrust violations, condemned with little analysis other than whether there was, indeed, an agreement.

The other conspiratorial harm that trade associations or groups of industry competitors can inflict is on competitors from another industry or profession. In my view, this harm is underrated and under-considered. I discussed this concern in a law review article a couple years ago.

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NC Dental PictureThe US Supreme Court does not review many antitrust cases. So when they do, it is kind of a big deal for antitrust attorneys around the world.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC, which addressed the scope of state-action immunity from antitrust liability. More specifically, the Court is reviewing whether a state licensing board must satisfy both prongs of what is known as the Midcal test to avoid antitrust scrutiny.

The first element, which everyone agrees applies, requires the defendant entity to show that the State “clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed” the challenged anticompetitive act as state policy. The Supreme Court is deciding whether state licensing boards are subject to the second element as well: whether the policy is “actively supervised by the State itself.” Municipalities and other local governments have a free pass from this second element, but private people and entities must satisfy the active supervision requirement.

So what is the big deal? If an entity—state or private—can show that state-action immunity doesn’t apply, it can violate the antitrust laws at will. It can grab consumer surplus for itself; it can exclude competition; it can behave under different rules than everyone else. And monopoly is quite profitable.

In NC Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC, a state-sanctioned dental board—composed of six licensed dentists, one licensed dental hygienist, and one public member—engaged in actions to exclude non-dentist teeth-whitening services. As you might recall, Bona Law filed an amicus brief in this case. You can learn about the case and our amicus brief here. Among other points, we argued that the Supreme Court should analyze the case as the Court outlined in American Needle, by reference to whether the units of competition—the independent decision-makers—are private. They are. We also advocated that the Supreme Court apply an active state supervision requirement with some teeth.

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BlackjackSo 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 developments somewhat obsessively at times. As a result, I have a good sense of the practical antitrust implications of certain cases, investigations, or prospective mergers.

I don’t have a crystal ball or anything. Nor do I have any inside information. And since human beings—judges or agency officials—make the relevant decisions, nobody can actually predict what will happen.

But by now, I can review a complaint or a motion to dismiss or description of facts and have a good sense of the strength and risk of the antitrust issues. I think I also have a decent idea how the major antitrust agencies—the FTC and Department of Justice—focus their priorities and like to resolve investigations, cases, and mergers. Like I said, I can’t predict anything with certainty, but there is a high learning curve for antitrust (probably more than most specialties) and I’ve spent a lot of time and effort climbing that curve.

Enough about me—for now anyway.

Let’s talk about antitrust and company stock performance. The obvious scenario is a merger. Two companies, perhaps competitors, announce a merger or acquisition. It isn’t a dead-on-antitrust-arrival merger between the first and second leading companies in a product and geographic market that is easily defined. Instead, it is the sort of merger where the markets are somewhat complicated, perhaps in flux, and it isn’t entirely clear whether an antitrust agency will challenge it or a court will stop it.

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MonopolyYou 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! It is a great article. And his discussion is not only a good antitrust primer—without the jargon—but is also absolutely accurate. Thom Lambert at the excellent blog, Truth on the Market, seems to agree.

Of course, you have to read beyond the headline, which is, like most headlines, meant to grab your attention. Peter Thiel in his book “Zero to One,” makes a lot of great points, from both the macro and micro level. I’ll focus on the micro level here.

Thiel contrasts perfect competition with monopoly. In the typical perfect-competition scenario, many firms will sell the exact same product, like a commodity. The market, at least theoretically, will achieve equilibrium, and there is no market power. The market sets the price. The profits for the sellers are minimal—zero if you are talking about economic profit (which assumes a modest rate of return).

In a typical monopoly market, by contrast, the seller is the primary or only firm that offers the product and can determine its own price and quantity produced (of course, even a monopolist can often reach the edge of its own relevant market by setting a price too high). A monopolist usually has a high-profit margin and very healthy profits.

Of course, perfect competition and monopoly are endpoints on a continuum, with lots of room between.

There is a lot to say about the article, but I am going to limit myself to the micro level—the perspective of the individual business not the overall economy.

Thiel develops the unremarkable proposition that it is much better to go into business as a fancy monopolist than a perfect-competition soldier. Thiel says “If you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business.” That’s right.

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Dollar signWhen you are a law student, you don’t usually understand that most cases are just one of several business tools that are companies utilize to advance their interests in the marketplace.

You might think that cases are academic-like exercises that reach either trial or some appellate court (perhaps after a motion-to-dismiss or summary-judgment motion). One or the other party or both are seeking justice and will not rest until the case terminates. That’s not a surprise, really, because much of what you do in law school is read such cases. I guess that is why many law students want to become appellate attorneys.

But the reality is that—as much as lawyers like myself like to view the law through an academic lens—a lawsuit or threat of a lawsuit is often just a way for someone to seek leverage. The claim is real and is serious, but litigating the case to termination is usually a last resort. The best result is often a settlement—the earlier the better.

Lawyers don’t like to talk about that much because unless you are on a contingency fee an early settlement means less money for the attorney. But it is the truth; lawyers are not special, really. What we do in litigation is often just another business tool to advance our client’s position in the marketplace. There are exceptions, of course—cases where justice must be done—but most commercial litigation doesn’t fall into that category.

Most of commercial litigation is a negotiating tool.

And an antitrust claim is a particularly large (and effective) bat when it comes to leverage.

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Antitrust matters to me. It is a big part of how I make my living—as an antitrust attorney. That is why the blog is called (unimaginatively) The Antitrust Attorney Blog. You might be an antitrust lawyer too. And if so, I guess the above question is easy for you to answer.

But if you aren’t an antitrust or competition lawyer, why read about antitrust? Maybe it is interesting to you? If so, then I respect you because you have what I view as a cool interest. You’ve probably been popular your whole life.

It is more likely, however, that antitrust matters to you because it could affect you (or if you are an attorney, your clients). In fact, I receive many calls from both business owners and non-antitrust attorneys because they or their clients may have an antitrust case or want to avoid someone having a case against them.

If you fall into one of those categories, I highly recommend that you attend a webinar that I am presenting on Tuesday, August 26 for Strafford entitled “Detecting Antitrust Red Flags in Business Dealings: Avoiding Costly Pitfalls: Identifying Potential Violations in Competitor, Supplier and Customer Interactions and Business Decisions.” I am honored to have two outstanding antitrust attorneys as co-presenters: Ryan W. Marth of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Justin W. Bernick of Hogan Lovells in Washington, DC.

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By Jarod Bona and Aaron Gott

We filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of We All Help Patients, Inc. in North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC, a federal antitrust case challenging anticompetitive conduct by professional-licensing boards.

Let us tell you a little bit about this interesting case.

The Antitrust Case

The North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners is composed of six licensed dentists, one licensed dental hygienist, and one “public member.” Dentists make a lot of money by offering teeth-whitening services. So when non-dentists started providing teeth-whitening services at a far lower cost, dentists started complaining to the Board about the lower-priced competitors.

Naturally, a Board made up of self-interested private parties had an incentive to do something about it. They began sending cease-and-desist letters to non-dentist teeth whiteners and even went so far as to ask shopping malls to not lease kiosks to teeth whiteners. It wasn’t clear, of course, that North Carolina law limited teeth-whitening services to dentists.

The Board’s actions were, in fact, a conspiracy to restrain trade. The members were competitors that acted in agreement to exclude other competitors. The conspiracy question was not at issue with the US Supreme Court.

The Federal Trade Commission, which has long advocated for “free and unfettered competition as the rule of trade” to protect consumers and economic liberty, issued an administrative complaint against the State Board and ultimately held that the Board engaged in anticompetitive conduct and the state-action immunity doctrine did not apply. The case made its way up through the Fourth Circuit—which agreed with the FTC—and finally to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Most of The Antitrust Attorney Blog entries focus on antitrust and competition law, which I suppose isn’t a surprise. But that hides the fact that I am a business litigator as well. While many of my matters relate to antitrust, some of them don’t.

So I thought this award would present a good opportunity for me to remind you that although I really enjoy antitrust, I can also help you with straight-up business disputes. This includes everything from basic breaches of contract to complex global disputes spanning several jurisdictions. It also includes, of course, appellate attorney work, which I write about from time-to-time.

In fact, my antitrust background gives me a leg-up in business and corporate litigation because I have spent years studying markets: I understand how companies compete in a market, which helps me to quickly grasp how an industry or company functions. This experience improves my ability to incorporate business considerations into my descriptions of various options for the client throughout the litigation process.

Many lawyers look at litigation as a game, to win at all costs, instead of understanding that litigation is just one of several tools to use—offensively or defensively—to develop a competitor’s position in the marketplace. It is important at every decision point to recognize that—unlike the litigator that probably works with a bunch of other competitive litigators that stress winning above all else—the client cares about the result relative to the cost.

Indeed, having my own business has further focused my sensitivity to the client’s perspective. I think I understand the client’s need to find someone that (1) they trust; (2) will pursue their goals, with the overall context of the business in mind; (3) will do great work. That may sound like the typical gobbledygook from a lawyer, but I think most businesses that have had to hire litigators will tell you that those three points are everything.

I started Bona Law PC in March 2014 and it is now August. Time flies. So far so good. I’ve been quite busy and I love the work. Even though people told me that I couldn’t do antitrust outside of a big firm, I have done a lot of antitrust. In fact, we are filing an Amicus Brief to the US Supreme Court this week in an antitrust case.

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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 of the Antitrust Law Journal arrived. I haven’t had a chance to read any of the articles yet—as I’ve been fortunately quite busy—but I skimmed it and it looks like a good one. Let’s review it together.

It is a double symposium issue, which is great because symposium issues can be a bummer if you don’t like the topic. This gives you twice the odds of liking at least some of the articles. The two topics are (1) Patent Assertion Entities, and (2) Politics and Antitrust.

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