Showing archive for: “Consumer Welfare Standard”
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
Reserve Judgment: The FTC Takes on Amazon’s Ad Auctions
The price to beat in Amazon’s advertising auctions may not have come from another advertiser at all, according to a lawsuit filed Aug. 31 by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In the complaint, the FTC alleges that Amazon quietly set the price itself, promising one pricing rule and using another. That allegation could support a ... Reserve Judgment: The FTC Takes on Amazon’s Ad Auctions
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 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
Android and the Art of Regulatory Self-Harm
Europe keeps asking where its technology champions are. In Google Android, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) offered part of the answer: build a successful platform, and Brussels may spend the next decade treating its architecture as evidence. The CJEU’s final judgment in Google Android, handed down last week, will be celebrated ... Android and the Art of Regulatory Self-Harm
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
California’s Other Wealth Tax
California is once again testing how much punishment capital will tolerate before it packs a bag. The state’s impending ballot proposition imposing a “billionaire’s tax” has drawn plenty of attention for precisely that reason: If the tax drives enough wealth elsewhere, it could lose more revenue than it raises. But a quieter proposal now moving ... California’s Other Wealth Tax
If at First Consumers Don’t Switch, Regulate Again
Under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), consumers are apparently sovereign—right up until they choose the wrong thing. When Mozilla reports that Firefox is now selected through a DMA browser-choice screen once every 10 seconds—more than 6 million selections in total, with daily active iOS users 113% higher in the European Union than they would have ... If at First Consumers Don’t Switch, Regulate Again
No Free Lunch at Linney’s Pizza
A pizza shop wants lower debit-card fees. Fair enough. But if it wins, the tab may not land where diners expect. It could reshape administrative law, narrow the Federal Reserve’s discretion, and make ordinary checking accounts more expensive. That is what is at stake in Linney’s Pizza, LLC v. Board of Governors of the Federal ... No Free Lunch at Linney’s Pizza
The DMA Meets the Rule of Law
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act was built to move fast: designate gatekeepers, impose obligations, and reshape digital markets before the lawyers can finish sharpening their pencils. But in Meta Platforms Ireland v. Commission, the General Court offered a useful reminder: even Europe’s new digital rulebook still has to pass through an old-fashioned door marked ... The DMA Meets the Rule of Law
