Author: Paul Moore2 Introduction Over the past several decades State Attorneys General have become increasingly involved in merger reviews in tandem with the Federal Trade Commission and/or the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (the Regulatory Agencies). This increase in state merger reviews has been in parallel with states raising…
Author: Molly Donovan & Luis Blanquez California continues to lead the trend away from non-competes with a new law that packs yet another punch against employers’ use of these very common contractual restrictions on employee mobility. Non-competes—also called restrictive covenants—typically prohibit an employee from taking employment with a rival firm…
Author: Aaron Gott In May of 2023, Minnesota enacted a new law that broadly bans employee non-compete agreements with few exceptions and also limits the use of forum-selection and choice-of-law clauses in employment agreements. You can read that law here (jump to 66.12). Note: the Federal Trade Commission is also…
Author: Jarod Bona When you defend antitrust class actions in federal court like we do, you often see a long list of state antitrust claims brought by what are called indirect purchasers. That is because the federal antitrust laws have this strange quirk that usually forbids federal antitrust claims for…
Author: Jarod Bona In an earlier article, we discussed Leegin and the controversial issue of resale-price maintenance agreements under the federal antitrust laws. We’ve also written about these agreements here. And these issues often come up when discussing Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) Policies, which you can read about here. As…
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…
Author: Luis Blanquez California’s long-standing public policy in favor of employee mobility over an employer’s ability to prohibit any worker from going to work for a competitor is included in California Business & Professions Code Section 16600. So how do employers outside of California try to get around this powerful…
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…
Author: Jarod Bona It depends. But probably not. Outside of California, courts may enforce these non-compete agreements arising out of an employment contract. Of course, most courts, no matter what the law and state, view them skeptically. In California, however, the policy against these agreements is particularly strong. A restrictive…
Most of The Antitrust Attorney Blog entries focus on antitrust and competition law, which I suppose isn’t a surprise. But that hides the fact that I am a business litigator as well. While many of my matters relate to antitrust, some of them don’t. So I thought this award would…