Showing archive for: “Antitrust”
Pump and Circumstance: The Politics of Italy’s Fuel-Price Caps
The Italian government is claiming a victory at the pump. Eni, the country’s largest oil company, has announced a 30-day cap on retail fuel prices. Italy’s second-largest fuel retailer, IP, controlled by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (Socar), followed suit, as did the third-largest, Q8. Smaller rivals warn that the caps could squeeze ... Pump and Circumstance: The Politics of Italy’s Fuel-Price Caps
Tap Your Own Brakes: AI Safety and Antitrust
Frontier artificial-intelligence (AI) labs may have good reasons to tap the brakes. The antitrust question begins when they all reach for the same pedal. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s proposal to “pace the frontier” has become a rallying point for AI companies interested in coordinating a slowdown in capability development. His plan calls for embedded outside ... Tap Your Own Brakes: AI Safety and Antitrust
Move Slow and Collude: The Antitrust Problem With Pacing AI
The frontier AI race’s latest safety proposal would have the leading contenders agree on how fast to run. Antitrust law has a less flattering name for that arrangement: a cartel. That is the central problem with the “pacing the frontier” plan that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei unveiled last weekend, and that fellow AI executives Sam ... Move Slow and Collude: The Antitrust Problem With Pacing AI
Prime Targets: Amazon, No-Poach Rules, and the Limits of Antitrust
The State of New Jersey’s antitrust case against Amazon begins with a serious allegation: that Amazon restricted drivers from moving among competing delivery contractors. But the state’s complaint goes much farther. It argues that Amazon’s entire Delivery Service Partner (DSP) system unlawfully gives the company monopsony power over both the small businesses that deliver its ... Prime Targets: Amazon, No-Poach Rules, and the Limits of Antitrust
Rate Expectations: Apple and the New Price Regulators
Competition policy is supposed to protect the competitive process, not do double-duty as price regulation. Yet the line between the two appears to be blurring in both a U.S. antitrust case and the European Union’s enforcement of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). On Aug. 14, after years of litigation with Epic Games, Apple submitted a ... Rate Expectations: Apple and the New Price Regulators
Four Patents and a Time Machine: CareFirst and the Perils of Backdated Antitrust
Four patents can carry a lot of antitrust baggage—especially when they come tucked inside a portfolio of more than 500. In CareFirst of Maryland v. Johnson & Johnson, health insurer CareFirst alleges that Johnson & Johnson unlawfully acquired and later asserted four patents to delay competition from biosimilars, highly similar alternatives to biologic drugs, for ... Four Patents and a Time Machine: CareFirst and the Perils of Backdated Antitrust
Too Many Cooks Spoil the Settlement
In American antitrust, clearing the federal gate increasingly means arriving at the state turnstiles. State attorneys general play a valuable role when harms are local or federal investigators miss key facts. But serial challenges to nationally integrated conduct turn that safeguard into a standing invitation to relitigate. The result is a system in which no ... Too Many Cooks Spoil the Settlement
The FTC’s AI Accuracy Statement Needs a Fact Check
A policy statement about accuracy should, at minimum, be precise. The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Proposed Policy Statement Concerning the Suppression of Accuracy in Artificial Intelligence Systems (AI Policy Statement) struggles with that assignment. The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) submitted comments in response to the FTC’s request for input, and this post ... The FTC’s AI Accuracy Statement Needs a Fact Check
The Price of Peace in the Swipe-Fee Wars
After 21 years, two failed settlements, and enough economic testimony to qualify as its own industry, the great interchange-fee war may finally be nearing a cease-fire. The terms are imperfect, and the case never had much economic merit. Even so, the proposed settlement may offer the best available escape from a dispute whose legislative sequels ... The Price of Peace in the Swipe-Fee Wars
The SEARCH Act Copies Europe’s Homework—and Its Mistakes
Some in Congress want to make online search more competitive by deciding in advance how search competition should work. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) introduced the Securing Enforcement of Americans’ Right to Competition at Home (SEARCH) Act earlier this month. Billed as a bipartisan effort to protect consumers and curb Big Tech’s ... The SEARCH Act Copies Europe’s Homework—and Its Mistakes
AICOA Rises from the Grave, Still Looking for a Theory of Harm
AICOA is back from the dead, and this time it has learned a few new tricks—mostly how to lower liability thresholds, raise defense burdens, and keep treating “Big Tech” as if capitalization were a theory of harm. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act has failed twice before. Its latest incarnation is not so much ... AICOA Rises from the Grave, Still Looking for a Theory of Harm
Gotta Catch ’Em All? Antitrust and the AI Talent Wars
The AI talent wars have produced a steady stream of stories that seem tailor-made to confirm everyone’s worst suspicions about Big Tech: nine-figure pay packages for star researchers, entire startup teams absorbed without a formal acquisition, and—most strikingly—reports of elite AI scientists paid handsomely to do nothing for a year under “garden leave” arrangements rather ... Gotta Catch ’Em All? Antitrust and the AI Talent Wars
