On 5 September 2024, Advocate General (AG) Laila Medina rendered her opinion in Alphabet and Others, suggesting that the European Court of Justice not apply the strict Bronner criteria when assessing Google’s refusal to grant access to its Android Auto platform for an app that provides a set of features for charging electric vehicles. Instead ..read more

In a spectacular turn, on September 3, 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union annulled the European Commission’s decision to review the acquisition of Grail by Illumina. The Commission had previously asserted its authority to examine the merger under Article 22 of the EU Merger Regulation, despite the transaction not meeting the EU ..read more

WHAT HAPPENED While they have long taken a back seat to federal merger reviews, US states are becoming increasingly involved in merger reviews, including potentially requiring premerger notifications on a broad scale. On July 24, 2024, the Uniform Law Commission adopted its Uniform Antitrust Pre-Merger Notification Act (Model Act) as model legislation for states to ..read more

Pharmaceutical patent holders beware: Over the past year, antitrust enforcers have taken a more aggressive approach challenging Orange Book listings as an anticompetitive practice. According to the Federal Trade Commission, improperly listing patents in the Orange Book constitutes an unfair method of competition, among other violations. In this article, Elai Katz, Lisa Rumin and Betty ..read more

Topics covered in this edition: UNITED STATES US agencies are increasingly scrutinizing consummated mergers from years past, including Live Nation’s purchase of Ticketmaster and Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. Reports indicate that, over the past three years, companies have abandoned 37 deals in the face of Federal Trade Commission pressure. Merger activity in oil ..read more

In May 2024, the European Commission published a Competition Policy Brief classifying certain agreements related to labor markets as serious antitrust infringements. According to the Commission, so-called wage-fixing and no-poach agreements can only be justified in exceptional cases. The Brief follows the first unannounced inspections by the Commission concerning labor market agreements in Germany and ..read more

On July 23, 2024, US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania declined to stay the September 4, 2024, effective date of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Final Rule that bans all new noncompete agreements nationwide and renders existing noncompete agreements binding most workers unenforceable. This ruling comes 20 days after a federal court ..read more

On May 20, 2024, US District Court Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald rejected a popular over-the-counter eyedrop seller’s bid for a new trial and granted a pricing injunction impacting two large wholesale membership clubs following one of very few Robinson-Patman Act (RPA) plaintiff-side jury verdicts in recent years. The case, L.A. International Corporation v. Prestige Brands Holdings, […] The post Making Sense of a Rare Robinson-Patman Act Plaintiffs’ Verdict appeared first on ANTITRUST ALERT ..read more

In a significant development for French merger control, on May 2, 2024, the French Competition Authority (FCA) applied the jurisprudence laid down in the recent Towercast case to an alleged anticompetitive agreement matter in the meat-cutting sector. In its Towercast ruling (C-449/21), the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) held that a merger […] The post New Developments in French Competition Law Pose Risk of Ex-Post Challenge to Non-Notifiable Transactions appeared first on ANTITRUST ALERT ..read more

Increased scrutiny of the healthcare industry from antitrust agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and US Department of Justice emphasize the necessity of compliance measures to mitigate antitrust risk that can negatively impact the closing of transactions. This article explores the critical role of clean team agreements (CTAs) in managing anti­trust risks during the […] The post Effecting M&A Diligence When Competitors Are Involved appeared first on ANTITRUST ALERT ..read more