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Blog o’ Blogs November 2015

By  |  November 17, 2015
November 2015, Volume 5, Number 11
This month’s theme is the extensive reach of antitrust. Whether in sports, philanthropy, consulting, pharm, and much more, it’s important to stay tuned into competition policy and laws.
Pardon the interruption
During an antitrust investigation, we often hear that our concerns fail to account for disruptive forces that will soon emerge and shake up the competitive dynamic in the market in the near future.
Stephen Weissman (FTC)
Removing barriers to competition in mobile payments platforms

Competition authorities often lack the right expertise to address competition bottlenecks in mobile money markets.

Elisa Sitbon (Brooking Institution)
Notable Developments Since the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority was Granted Concurrent Competition Powers
An expansion of this nature suggests that the FCA aims to take on a significant number of new cases and, in particular, exercise its newly-enhanced powers to enforce UK competition law.
Jo O’Riordan (Comp Law Blog)
Three Supreme Court Petitions to Watch
However, within just one month, the Court has been asked to review three high-profile antitrust decisions.
Jeffrey May (AntitrustConnect Blog)
The Antitrust Laws Encourage Stealing

An agreement not to steal each other’s employees is a per se antitrust violation that allows the government or plaintiffs to dispense with some serious elements of proof. 

Jarod Bona (Antitrust Attorney Blog)
De minimis and Article 102 TFEU: how to make sense of Post Danmark II (and Tomra, and Expedia)
The Court refuses to set a de minimis threshold, true, but this fact does not mean that dominant firms’ practices are always abusive. 
Pablo Ibáñez Colomo (Chillin’Competition)
 
Eligibility for sporting competitions caught in the cross-hairs of competition law
It may be that the recognition of the organisational traditions of sport no longer cuts ice (or at least carries the same weight) with competition bodies as it did, such that rules conferring exclusivity and monopolies will need to be justified on the merits.
Ravi S. Mehta (Sports Law Bulletin)
The latest round in the “product-hopping” battle
Product redesign should only give rise to anticompetitive claims if combined with some other wrongful conduct, or if the new product is clearly a “sham” innovation.
Joanna Shepherd (Truth on the Market)
Veering Off the Well-Trodden Path? European Merger Control and the Pharmaceutical Industry
This indicates that the level of intervention in pharmaceutical cases is significantly higher than across the economy as a whole.
Gavin Bushell (AntitrustConnect Blog)
Broadband usage caps are probably inefficient

So if it was all about funding infrastructure, why did Comcast opt for a model that raised prices at the top rather than offered accessible usage at the bottom?

Joshua Gans (Digitopoly)
On the Commission’s powers to request information (II)—Opinion of AG Wahl in case C-247/14P, Heidelberg Cement
What is extreme in this case is not the Opinion, but rather the challenged decision.
Alfonso Lamadrid (Chillin’Competition)
Doing good well
Proposed collective actions by competitors, even for the purpose of promoting laudable social welfare goals, are proper matters of antitrust concern.
Michael Bloom (FTC)
European Court of Justice Upholds Cartel Facilitator Liability
The ECJ’s AC-Treuhand judgment clarifies the key concepts of “agreement” and “concerted practice” for purposes of European antitrust law.
Jay Modrall (Norton Rose Law Blog)
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