Competition Law News
Judge Cuts Unrevealed Slice of FTC’s Amazon Case, But a Lot Remains
FTC preparing amended complaint, due October 31. U.S. Judge John H. Chun in Seattle has cut a temporarily undisclosed portion of the Federal Trade…
Amazon Investors Amazon Execs Hid Antitrust Troubles
Shareholders say Bezos and Execs Caused Them “Massive” Losses Two Amazon Inc. investors have filed a shareholder derivative lawsuit against Jeff Bezos and other senior…
Antitrust Fines Against Apple and Amazon Scrapped in Italy
At the start of October, an Italian administrative court ruled that Apple and Amazon no longer have to pay a $225 million fine levied by…
Amazon’s iRobot Acquisition Faces Shareholder and Consumer Resistance as FTC Investigates
iRobot Corp. shareholders approved Amazon.com, Inc.’s $1.7 billion purchase of the Roomba maker on Oct. 17, while a pre-trial conference in a suit brought by…
Amazon Abusing Dominance to Maintain Dominance, California AG Files Anticompetition Suit
Amazon dodges price competition with other e-commerce sites by forcing merchants into agreements that penalize them if their prices beat Amazon’s. That’s the crux of…
Amazon Shareholder Files Biometric Privacy and Antitrust Suit
Amazon shareholder Francis Gimbel, Jr. has sued Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s Board of Directors, and other company leaders in federal court in Washington for allegedly storing…
In Price Restriction Litigation, Amazon Wins One, Loses One
Amazon.com Inc. started the month of March with two suits on opposite coasts challenging the rules it imposes on the platform’s merchants which prohibit them…
Hearing No Further Objections from the FTC, Amazon Buys MGM
Recommitted to fighting anticompetitive consolidation, the government could still challenge the deal. The Federal Trade Commission’s silence last week on Amazon’s acquisition of MGM –…
House Judiciary Committee Says Amazon Obstructed and Lied to Congress, Seeks Investigation
The House Judiciary Committee has informed Attorney General Merrick Garland of “potentially criminal conduct” on the part of Amazon and its top executives. Detailed in…
Amazon-MGM: Deal Approved in Europe, Now It’s Up to the FTC
Finding “no competition concerns,” antitrust regulators at the European Commission yesterday (March 15) approved Amazon’s $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM and its collection of some…
Amazon Misleading Consumers About Sponsored Products, Labor Group Says
Group tells FTC Amazon is abusing consumer trust. “Amazon doesn’t distinguish well enough between paid ads and organic search results, something that could trick consumers”…
DOJ Antitrust Division Subpoenas AI Chip Leader Nvidia
Report suggests DOJ is examining anticompetitive pricing strategies to lock up customers, lock out competitors. Bloomberg News reports that the Department of Justice Antitrust Division…
Google’s $500M Effort to Undermine Microsoft EU Cloud Deal Fails: Bloomberg Reports
Reports of Google’s muscular attempt to thwart a Microsoft antitrust settlement in the European Union underscores the fierce rivalry between these tech giants and the…
DOJ, FTC Target AI Industry in Antitrust Investigation: Three Takeaways
According to a report from New York Times reporter David McCabe, federal regulators have agreed to share responsibilities for investigating antitrust issues within the artificial…
The FTC Requests More Info About Walmart’s $2.3 Billion Vizio Acquisition
The deal is about data, advertising, and Amazon. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has kicked off an antitrust inquiry into Walmart Inc.’s proposed acquisition of…
Google, Meta List Efforts to Comply with New EU Law After Smaller Firms Claim No Progress
DMA will constitute a ‘paradigm shift in digital markets,’ say rivals. The world’s leading tech, ecommerce, and social media companies have until March 7,…
Microsoft Fails to Quell Antitrust Concerns in Europe Over Teams Bundling
Microsoft Corp.’s plan to unbundle Teams from its flagship Office offerings in Europe has not allayed the antitrust concerns of competition regulators in Luxemburg. The…
Six More Platforms Must Show Compliance with EU’s Digital Markets Act
Signaling greater antitrust scrutiny in Europe, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (TikTok), Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft have earned designations as “gatekeepers” by the European Commission…
Google’s A.I. Service Draws Early Copyright and Privacy Class Action
Google Bard competitor ChatGPT also getting attention from plaintiffs and regulators. Allegations have lingered for centuries in far-off corners of the literary world that…
CISPE.cloud Files Licensing Complaint Against Microsoft
In November of 2022, Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) announced it was filing a formal complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission’s Directorate-General…
Will Big Book Merger Go Through? It Will Soon Be Up to the Judge.
The fate of the $2.2 billion Penguin Random House (PRH) / Simon & Schuster (S&S) merger remains with U.S. District Judge Florence Pan who presided…
What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Antitrust?
Comedian John Oliver (no relation to MoginRubin antitrust attorney Jennifer Oliver, or so she claims) spent nearly a half hour of his show Last Week…
Democrats Seek Investigation of $43M Discovery, WarnerMedia Merger
Thirty-three U.S. representatives and senators, all Democrats, have asked the Department of Justice to investigate the proposed merger of two media giants, Discovery Inc. and…
House Judiciary Committee Asks: Did Bezos Mislead Us?
Congress has its hands full with witnesses these days. This week, in the case of Big Tech, congressmen have circled back to testimony given by…
U.S. Antitrust Law Not Working for Book or Tech Market?
“American antitrust is basically a failure.” That’s a quote from a law professor in a recent New York Times article written by Shira Ovide titled…
Antitrust Subcommittee and Big Tech CEOs: Creatures From Very Different Planets
A Tale of Two Hearings: Breaking Down the July 2020 Hearing on Tech Marketplace They appeared at the hearing, appropriately enough, digitally. This allowed…
Apple, Inc. Probed by European Commission for Possible Antitrust Violations
In late June, the European Commission (EC) opened several formal cases investigating Apple’s mobile payment technology (Apple Pay) and various third-party and user agreements to…
Good Read: ‘The Great Antitrust Awakening Can’t Be Stopped’
Do the big tech companies — and those of us who enjoy their myriad innovations — owe a big “thank you” to the federal government…
The New York Times: A Better Way to Break Up Big Tech
From The New York Times: A Better Way to Break Up Big Tech Senator Elizabeth Warren has been making waves with her recent proposal to…