Luis Blanquez

We recently wrote about the Federal Trade Commission’s blog post explaining how relying on a common algorithm to determine your pricing decisions might violate Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The FTC has Algorithmic Price-Fixing in its Antitrust Crosshairs It was just a matter of time until the first cases would hit the courts. That’s why during…

Author: Luis Blanquez Apple is currently feeling the heat from antitrust authorities all over the world. Probably more than ever. Below is an article we recently published in the Daily Journal discussing in some detail the last developments in the Epic Games saga, both in the EU and the US. Epic Games Has Returned to the Apple Store.…

Author: Luis Blanquez Are you delegating your pricing decisions to a common algorithm software platform? If so, you might violate the antitrust laws. It may not even matter whether you actually communicated with your competitors. All it might take is for the antitrust agencies—The Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission—to allege illegal collusion is the use…

Whether you have an offensive antitrust claim to assert against another business, or an antitrust claim is being asserted against your business, it can be helpful to put at least a ballpark dollar figure on the potential damages at stake. For example, let’s say you have an antitrust claim to assert against your competitor, but…

Author: Luis Blanquez Apple was a significant beneficiary of the DOJ’s suit against Microsoft more than 20 years ago in the US. The remedy paved the way for Apple to launch iTunes, iPod, and eventually the iPhone. These are not my words, but the words from Jonathan Kanter––Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of…

On January 22, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued its usual annual announcement to increase the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act thresholds. The 2024 thresholds will take effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, which is expected soon, so the thresholds likely will be effective in late February.

The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice are reminding companies that, in responding to grand jury subpoenas and second requests, there is an obligation to preserve data and communications created using “new methods of collaboration and information sharing tools, even including tools that allow for messages to disappear via ephemeral messaging capabilities.” The…

A federal court has rejected an attempt to toss Bona Law client PharmacyChecker’s antitrust lawsuit about competition and transparency in prescription drug pricing. Judge Michael Simon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon issued an order January 3, 2024 denying summary judgment to defendant LegitScript, LLC, a private for-profit pharmacy verification company and competitor…

Author: Molly Donovan and 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 once their current employment has…

Author: Luke Hasskamp and Molly Donovan In yet another important labor-monopsony case, a federal court in Nevada has declared a win for MMA athletes fighting against their promoter’s alleged misuse of monopsony power in the market for acquiring fighters’ services. Class certification has been granted to MMA fighters accusing their promoter of locking them into…

In case you missed it on the eve of a holiday weekend, the FTC and several states settled their challenge of Amgen’s acquisition of Horizon last Friday. The case might have seemed like an odd one to antitrust and merger practitioners looking only at the last few decades of merger review; however, both the challenge and the…