Author: Jarod Bona Antitrust law evolves in such a way that opinions from federal appellate courts are always interesting in how they affect the doctrine. But there are a select few judges who earn even closer attention when they write an antitrust opinion. Judge Diane P. Wood of the United…
Articles Posted in Antitrust News
California Supreme Court Confirms Independent Wrongfulness Requirement for Certain Tortious Interference Claims and Clarifies Section 16600 Standard
Author: Jarod Bona Competitors battle in the marketplace and sometimes battle in the courts. Bona Law is an antitrust and competition boutique law firm, but most people think of the “competition” part of that description as redundant to the antitrust label. That is not a surprise because outside of the…
Big Tech Hearings: What Do They Tell Us About Amazon and Antitrust?
Author: Steven Cernak The U.S. House Antitrust Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee’s recent hearings into “big tech” and antitrust were “must see TV” for antitrust attorneys. Over the five hours of testimony, many interesting questions were asked of the leaders of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon; unfortunately, the format often…
An Antitrust Fight Between the Talent Agencies and the Writers About How Hollywood Does Business
Author: Jarod Bona As an antitrust lawyer, I find it interesting to see the inner workings of different types of markets—how people and companies buy and sell things. And the entertainment industry is one of the more fascinating ones. The entertainment industry includes an interesting mix of concentrated players at…
US Antitrust Agencies Release Updated Vertical Merger Guidelines
Authors: Steven Cernak and Jarod Bona In big antitrust news, the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division released a draft of an update to the 1984 Vertical Merger Guidelines (VMG) on January 10, 2020. Only three of the five FTC commissioners voted to release the draft with…
Antitrust News: The Eleventh Circuit Agrees that the Supreme Court’s Phoebe Putney Decision Really Did Change the State-Action-Immunity Test from the Earlier Hallie and Omni Decisions
Author: Luis Blanquez The Eleventh Circuit recently rejected the City of LaGrange’s attempt to assert state-action immunity from antitrust liability in Diverse Power, Inc. v. City of Lagrange, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 24772 (11th Cir. Ga., Aug. 20, 2019). And here is why. In a nutshell, the City of LaGrange…
Antitrust News: The Department of Justice Wants You to Have a Strong Antitrust Compliance Policy
Author: Jarod Bona You might hear from an antitrust attorney that it is important to have a strong antitrust compliance policy. And you may think to yourself, yes, I suppose it is. Then you go about your over-packed day, periodically seeing from other professionals that whatever their specialty is, you…
Antitrust News: The International Competition Network Standardizes Due Process Principles for Antitrust and Competition Enforcement Agencies Worldwide
Author: Luis Blanquez The U.S. Department of Justice recently published that the International Competition Network (“ICN”) has approved the Framework on Competition Agency Procedures (“CAP”), for antitrust enforcement agencies around the world to promote fundamental due process principles in competition law investigations and enforcement. This is an opt-in framework, based…
Antitrust News: The Oscars’ Proposed Ban on Netflix Movies Raises Antitrust Concerns
Author: Aaron Gott My morning routine usually begins with reading the news to keep up on current events. As an antitrust lawyer, I often find myself thinking about how stories that were deemed newsworthy for other reasons fail to recognize their often most troubling aspects: the antitrust concerns. Last week,…
Antitrust News: The Department of Justice Supports a Market-Participant Exception to State-Action Immunity in No-Poaching Agreement Case Against Duke University
Author: Jarod Bona It is illegal under the antitrust laws for competitors to agree not to steal each others’ employees. For more about that, you can read our article about how the antitrust laws encourage stealing. Yes, you read that correctly. But this article isn’t about stealing or even agreeing…