The owner of a patent on a brand-name drug sues a competitor for infringing the patent. The parties settle. But the infringer doesn't pay. The patent-owner does. Why? In return for the competitor's agreement not to compete during the rest of the patent's term.
Four of our 13 courts of appeals held that such a "reverse
The wise thing for me to say . . . is that I don't have evidence to contradict it.
David Ingram, "Q&A: Plaintiffs' Lawyer Barry Barnett on the Comcast class action", Thomson Reuters News & Insight, May 13, 2013 (referring to "the academic study spotlighted in The New York Times that found
At the end of the one of the Best Movies Ever, Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) drives with her young daughter towards safety down a Los Angeles street. Will they escape? Yes, we think they just might!
A Los Angeles police lieutenant (Perry Lopez) steps onto the pavement. He aims his pistol and fires. Mulwray's car
NYU Law School Professor Richard A. Epstein — "an advocate of minimal legal regulation" and "one of the most influential legal thinkers of modern times" — thinks the U.S. Supreme Court got its ruling wrong in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, No. 11-864 (U.S. Mar. 27, 2013) (post here).
Leaving to one side the
Today the Supreme Court, by 5-4, reversed a ruling that upheld certification of an antitrust case against Comcast as a class action. The majority disagreed with the district court and court of appeals on whether the plaintiffs' damages model showed class-wide losses from Comcast's efforts to thwart "overbuilder" competition in the Philadelphia area.
Justice Scalia wrote the
We've known at least since Bell Atl. Co. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007), that competitors can engage in parallel conduct — charging the same price, offering the same product features, setting identical contract terms — without running afoul of the Sherman Act. A plaintiff claiming a violation of section 1, which bars conspiracies
Kimberly Kralowec offers a preview of the oral argument this morning in Am. Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, No. 12-133 (U.S.). Check it out.
The case deals with whether a court may strike down an arbitration clause under federal law (the Arbitration Act) on the ground that it makes getting relief under substantive
Blawgletter has noted concerns about awarding money from class action judgments and settlements to non-class members by way of "cy pres" awards. See "Does Cy Pres Have a Prayer?". These payments aim to do the next best thing to paying the funds to the members of the class.
Such efforts become necessary fairly
A "substate" governmental entity that engages in conduct that would usually violate the Sherman Act may escape liablity under the state-action doctrine if the "state" directs "substate" to do the anticompetitive deeds. But the state must "'clearly articulate[] and affirmatively express[]' state policy to displace competition." Fed'l Trade Comm'n v. Phoebe Putney Health Sys., Inc., No. 11-1160, slip
The Second Circuit held on Valentine's Day that cheaters shouldn't prosper.
At least when they sue their old bid-rigging friends for rigging bids so as to punish them for mending their cheating ways. The panel ruled that Gatt Communications lacked standing to sue its erstwhile co-conspirators because, among other things, the harm to Gatt didn't