Update May 2011: The Ninth Circuit upheld the dismissal of a private challenge to the merger, holding that the plaintiff’s allegation of a pharmaceutical market was inadequate. Update October 2009: The FTC has signed off on the merger on the condition that Pfizer sell some of its animal health business. But a group of pharmacists […]
Category Archives: Federal Trade Commission
Limits on Access to Discount Listings in MLS Violate FTC Act
May 25, 2011 – 2:20 pm
The Sixth Circuit has upheld a Federal Trade Commission ruling that a Michigan MLS service acted anticompetitively in adopting a rule that discount real estate listings would not (1) be transmitted to other public sites that provided access to full commission listings; and (2) listed within the MLS’s default search function. The court upheld the FTC’s findings […]
Ninth Circuit Refuses to Stay Medical Lab Merger
May 12, 2011 – 1:48 pm
The Ninth Circuit has upheld a district court decision refusing the FTC’s request that the court stay, pending FTC administrative proceedings, the merger of Laboratory Corp. of America and Westcliff Medical Laboratories. The FTC alleged that the merger would enable two labs to control 89% of the capitated billing market. The court agreed with a dissenting FTC commission […]
The FTC Rules that NC Dental Board is Subject to Antitrust Law
April 15, 2011 – 1:21 pm
The Federal Trade Commission denied a motion to dismiss their administrative suit against the North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners (the “Board”), finding that the state-action doctrine does not render the Board immune from the administrative antitrust proceeding. The FTC alleged that the Board violated the Sherman Act when they required that teeth whitening […]
New Merger Guidelines Released
August 19, 2010 – 3:30 pm
The United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, and the Federal Trade Commission have released new merger guidelines explaining how the enforcement agencies review horizontal mergers. The merger guidelines have existed in various forms since 1968. The last major revision was in the mid-1990s. The agencies announced last fall that they were planning to revise the […]
Intel & FTC Settle Case
August 17, 2010 – 3:10 pm
Following up on a high profile EU action, in December 2009, the Federal Trade Commission sued Intel alleging violations of Section 5 of the FTC Act. The Commission and Intel agreed to settle the action in an agreement that will prevent Intel from restricting competition or limiting competitors sales of CPUs and GPUs by compeling computer makers to use Intel chips exclusively […]
FTC Wins Order to Undo Battery Merger
May 28, 2010 – 1:36 pm
FTC ALJ ordered Polypore to sell the stake in Microporous to an FTC-approved buyer within six months of the final order. Polypore had acquired the battery maker just over two years ago, and the FTC at that time sought unsuccessfully to block the deal. The ALJ found that the FTC demonstrated that the merger had […]
No Price Fixing Conspiracy in Text Message Price Fixing Case
May 26, 2010 – 6:35 pm
Update May 2010: The court has held that the plaintiffs more detailed amended complaint property alleges a conspiracy. The amended complaint alleges that the defendants used the Wireless Internet Caucus to facilitate price fixing agreements with respect to text messages, including specific dates and executives who attended the meetings. Although the defendants argued that the […]
FTC Permits Google Acquisition of AdMob to Move Forward
May 26, 2010 – 1:55 pm
After expressing some concerns about the competitive effects of Google’s acquisition of AdMob, the FTC unanimously voted to close the investigation citing Apple’s recent acquisition of Quattro Wireless and plans to become an aggressive competitor in the mobile advertising network market.
Drug Purchasers’ Challenge to Exclusion of Generic Dismissed
April 19, 2010 – 2:04 pm
Southern District of Ohio Judge Michael Watson dismissed an antitrust claim brought be direct purchasers of the drug Plavix against the patent holder and its generic competitor alleging that they anticompetitively kept generic Plavix from the market. The patent holder and generic competitor had reached a settlement agreement that was rejected by the FTC. The parties […]