Did 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.
A damages trial will follow.
Apple pursued a nutty defense, which held that it and the publishers did no wrong
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
Today the Supreme Court granted review in Federal Trade Comm'n v. Watson Pharmaceuticals, No. 12-416 (U.S.), an antitrust case that presents the question of whether section 1 of the Sherman Act bars Competitor A from paying Competitor B to delay rolling out a generic drug that vies for sales with Competitor A's brand-name drug. Posts
The Second Circuit today came out with rulings in two big commercial cases.
The first involved a "collateralized debt obligation", the second a cartel that the plaintiffs alleged fixed prices for "publication paper". Plaintiffs won both times.
The CDO case stemmed from a $60 million purchase in December 2006 by a German bank, Bayerische
May a pack of hedge funds gang up on a borrower to stop pack members from cutting deals with the borrower to lighten its debt burden?
Of course they can (and would), you say. But would they thus run afoul of the Sherman Act? Did you think of that? Heard of section 1? Which bars
U.S. Senior District Judge John Padova today granted in part and denied in part the motion of Comcast for summary judgment on claims that it violated sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act by entering into market-allocation agreements with competitors and monopolizing the market for cable services in the Philadelphia area.
Judge Padova's 72-page
Suppose you took out loans to help pay the costs of running your business. You later suffer some setbacks. Bad ones. The market price of the loans, and their value on your lenders' books, take a tumble. In a fair world, those who made the loans would gladly let you pay off the debt at a discount, right?
The Third Circuit today affirmed a class certification order in an antitrust case.
The case, Behrend v. Comcast Corp., No. 10-2865 (3d Cir. Aug. 23, 2011), involves claims that Comcast violated sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act and that the antitrust violations allowed Comcast to overcharge Philadelphia cable subscribers.
The court's 2-1
Do you text? You know — that typey thing you do with your mobile phone. Choose the number, key in the words, hit send and — presto — the text goes over the wireless network to your best friend's Storm/iPhone/Android/Pixon/i8510/Touch HD/n85/Renoir.
Easy, right? But not cheap.
Which fact seems to have prompted the filing of
The attorneys-general of eight states plus the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice have settled antitrust claims against Visa and MasterCard over their restrictions on merchants' freedom to steer customers away from cards that carry high acceptance charges.
They also sued American Express after it declined to settle.
The pact with Visa and MasterCard