December 1, 2008 – 3:40 pm
CCS Corp. agreed to abandon its plan to acquire Newport Resources Environmental services business. Although the company maintained that the acquisition of the business providing environmental services to off-shore oil and gas providers was not anticompetitive, it did not wish to engage in a protracted court battle.
Prior Post: The FTC has sought a temporary restraining order in the Southern District of Texas to block the acquisition of Newpark Environmental Services by CCS Corp. while proceeding before the FTC go forward. Both companies provide waste disposal services to the offshore oil and gas industry. The FTC claims that the companies are close competitors and that the acquisition would result in higher prices. CCS threatened to shut down its operations in the Gulf if the acquisition were not approved, but the FTC dismissed the threat as a pretext.
December 1, 2008 – 1:17 pm
Judge Gleason, the Southern District of NY judge overseeing the multi-district Visa/MasterCard antitrust litigation disagreed with his magistrate and dismissed a claim by the merchant plaintiffs that MasterCard’s IPO unlawfully lessened competition under Section 7 of the Clayton Act. The complaint alleged that the IPO was a sham to create the appearance that MasterCard was a single entity that could set interchange fees independently from its member banks. In reality, the merchants claimed, the banks would continue to operate together to control the fee. Judge Gleason held that since the new board of directors would consist of a majority of indepenent directors, as opposed to the current majority of executives from the member banks, the IPO could not lessen competition. The dismissal was without prejudice.
November 30, 2008 – 3:58 pm
Update May 2009: Belgium antitrust authorities briefly examined InBev’s pricing practices, finding no anticompetitive conduct.
Update: November 2008: US, UK, and Chinese antitrust authorties approved the InBev-Anheuser-Busch merger. In the US, the merged entity was required to license its Labatt brand to a third party for production and sale in the US and was prohibited from importing Canadian brewed Labatt.
The Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, has issued a second request seeking additional information on the competitive impact of the proposed Anheuser-Busch/InBev merger. Second requests are often used to extend the Division’s time to review a transaction, and the mere issuance of a second request does not by itself suggest that the merger will ultimately be challenged by the government.
November 23, 2008 – 7:55 pm
Mokulele Air sued Mesa Airlines in Arizona Federal District Court alleging that Mesa has taken steps to monopolize the market for inter-island air travel in Hawaii. The complaint alleges predatory pricing, misuse of confidential information, and other improper tactics designed to drive Mokulele from the market.
November 23, 2008 – 7:53 pm
A New Mexico appellate court in Romero v. Philip Morris, et al. reversed a summary judgment ruling in favor of tobacco companies, reinstating a price fixing claim. Relying on the plaintiffs’ expert, the court held that the allegations were sufficient to support a conspiracy claim. The plaintiffs alleged that that tobacco companies altered the pricing policies in similar ways that could not reasonably have resulted from unilateral decision-making. The court affirmed the summary judgment in favor of two companies, finding that with respect to them the allegations were as consistent with conscious parallelism as with conspiracy.
November 23, 2008 – 7:41 pm
An antitrust counterclaim alleging that Apple unlawfully tied the use of its operating system to the purchase of it own hardware was dismissed by a Northern District of California court on the ground that the plaintiff, Psystar, had failed to adequately allege the relevant market. Under Twombly, the court held, Psystar allegations were insufficient to support a claim that Apple computers and its operating system formed a separate antitrust market.
November 23, 2008 – 7:32 pm
The jury in a Federal District Court case against AT&T found that the telco giant did not conspire with Spring and MCI in the manner in which it passed on the universal service fee to customers. The jury did find in favor of the plaintiffs on a breach of contract claim. Sprint had previously settled the claim against it.
November 23, 2008 – 7:20 pm
On November 20, 2008, the European Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling in the Irish beef case, concluding that a scheme by some beef processors to leave the processing industry, restricted competition and violated EU rules. The European Commission commented that the ruling confirmed that agreements between competitors to restrict capacity or production were hardcore restrictions of competition that generally harm consumers.
November 21, 2008 – 11:05 am
Southern District of NY Judge Harold Baer ruled that an antitrust action against Sanofi-Aventis for filing an allegedly baseless citizent petition to block approval of generic versions of rheumatoid-arthritis drug leflunomide. The plaintiff, Louisiana Wholesale Drug Co. argues that the petition was filed with the intent to delay approval, and that it had the intended effect of delaying that approval for several months.
Update: November 2008: The jury found that the petition was not objectively groundless and thus ruled for the defendant.
November 18, 2008 – 11:42 am
In response to a patent infringement suit, Abbyy USA Software House alleged that the dominant provider of OCR software Nuance Communications was attempting to monopolize the OCR software market by entering exclusive agreements with equipment manufacturers and retails and by buying up its competitors patents. The court found an insufficient factual basis for allegations of market foreclosure beyond that inherent in any lawful contract, dismissing the claim without prejudice.