Buy ButtonYou have a special treat today.

Hollis Salzman and Meegan F. Hollywood at Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P. in New York have written a timely Guest Post on an important and exotic antitrust topic — monopsony.

Ms. Salzman serves as Co-Chair of Robins Kaplan's Antitrust and Trade Regulation Group and as co-lead counsel in blockbuster antitrust

Shutterstock_122546788Apple settles

Apple has settled up to $841 million of antitrust claims by state attorneys-general and a nationwide class of consumers who bought e-books from Apple and its publisher co-conspirators.

The pact comes almost a year after U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in New York held Apple civilly liable for conspiracy to fix prices, a

AdamSmithBlawgletter has lately started scanning news reports about the U.S. Justice Department Antitrust Division's bid to block the minnow-eats-whale merger of U.S. Airways and American Airlines. Wowsers.

Let's start by saying we've found that the biz reporters have a not-very-good grasp of antitrust law. A terrible one in fact. They seem to think that whatever

OctopusOn Aug. 12, the AAntitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice joined with the attorneys-general of six states and the District of Columbia to file a lawsuit to stop the merger of AMR, which owns American Airlines, into U.S. Airways. You can see the complaint here.

The filing took Blawgletter by surprise. Living in DFW, which

E-bookDid Apple collude with publishers to jack up the price of e-books?

You betcha, U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote ruled in Manhattan today after a three-week trial.

NYT story here, WSJ there.

A damages trial will follow.

Apple pursued a nutty defense, which held that it and the publishers did no wrong

1998-134-4_newSnappy reclines. The Empire State Building looms in the mid-distance. Bitey consults his notes. He clears his throat.

Bitey:    The U.S. Supreme Court's summer break started last week, Snaps, and the time has come for us to look at the . . . uh . . . results of the 2012-13 Term for those commercial cases

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