Antitrust Lawyer Blog

Commentary on Current Developments

The Center for International Private Enterprise recently hosted an event on Digitalization in Central America: Strategies for Regional Transformation and Recovery. On June 10, 2021, the group, which focuses on supporting private enterprise and market-based democratic reform across the world, brought together four leaders from the George W. Bush Institute’s Central American Prosperity Project (CAPP) to discuss possibilities for digital growth in the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

As part of CAPP’s Future of Work initiative, the discussion was moderated by Matthew Rooney, Managing Director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative, and featured Marcos Andrés Antil, CEO and Founder of XumaK; Mey Hung, Walmart Corporate Affairs Leader for Honduras and Guatemala; and Kathia Yacaman, Executive Vice President at Grupo Karim.

The discussion centered on ways Northern Triangle and Central American countries can promote investment and encourage companies and workers to get involved in the region. Transparency, licensing regulations, and workforce training were identified by the panelists as some of the more pressing issues and opportunities for growth for governments and industry leaders.

On May 25, 2021, the D.C. Office of the Attorney General (DC AG) filed an antitrust complaint against Amazon.com, Inc. in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. The complaint accuses the company of monopolization and illegal restraints of trade. Interestingly, the complaint does not include allegations of federal antitrust violations.

The complaint alleges that Amazon “fair pricing policy” requires third-party sellers who sell products through Amazon to agree to what is really a most-favored-nation (“MFN”) provision. According to the complaint, this fair pricing policy restrains third-party sellers, which wish to sell on Amazon’s platform, from selling their products on other websites, including their own websites, at prices lower, or on better terms, than offered through Amazon. This fair pricing policy replaced Amazon’s price parity provision, but the claim is that this new policy has the same effect as Amazon’s old policy.  It is considered a platform most-favored nation agreement and allows for Amazon to penalize third parties found in violation of these policies. Allegedly, the provisions have the effect of creating a price floor with Amazon’s prices being the lowest. Because these third-party sellers incorporate Amazon’s fees – which can be up to 40% of the product’s price – into their prices, they are forced to inflate their product prices on other platforms since they must account for the fees in their sale price. The claim of the Office of the Attorney General is that this policy suppresses competition and unnaturally inflates prices for consumers across all online retail platforms. The complaint asserts that these unreasonably high fees are built into prices market wide, due to the alleged price floor caused by the most-favored nation provisions.

According to the complaint, Amazon allegedly violates D.C. antitrust law in a variety of ways. First, Amazon is alleged to be engaged in unlawful horizontal agreements because Amazon horizontally competes with many third-party sellers (i) as online retailers, and (ii) in particular products. Second, Amazon is alleged to be engaged in unlawful vertical agreements because the most-favored-nation provisions eliminate competition in online retail. Third, Amazon, accounting for 50-70% of all online retail sales and benefiting from network effects, is alleged to monopolize and attempt to monopolize the online retail sales market.

On March 18, 2021, the House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust subcommittee had a hearing labeled “Reviving Competition, Part 3: Strengthening the Laws to Address Monopoly Power”. The hearing began with opening remarks from Representative David Cicilline (D-RI), who spoke about the limitations in current antitrust laws on the topic of market dominance, and remarks from Representative Ken Buck (R-CO) who spoke on how both political parties are willing to work together in numerous areas. The hearing encompassed six testimonies from witnesses Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, Acting Chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”); Judge Diane P. Wood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; Phillip Weiser, Attorney General of Colorado; Dr. Mike Walker, Chief Economic Adviser for the United Kingdom Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”); Noah Phillips, Commissioner at the FTC (Republican); and Doug Peterson, Attorney General of Nebraska.

For opening remarks, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the Acting Chair of the FTC, declared: “Aggressive enforcement using the FTC’s existing authority can and should be complemented by this committee’s work to sharpen antitrust laws and to impose broader market-wide restrictions that address pervasive anticompetitive conduct and conditions. I believe the FTC must push antitrust law forward through bold agency action.” Slaughter said, we must lay the groundwork for success for new theories and more aggressive enforcement.  Here, she touted the FTC’s recently announced working group to build a new approach to pharmaceutical mergers.  She suggested the FTC should consider bringing standalone Section 5 claims more frequently and called on more resources for the agency.

Slaughter conveyed her disappointment in the FTC’s decisions and actions on not suing Google back in 2013. “It’s incumbent on the FTC to bring hard cases in all areas, not just in tech, not just in platforms,” Slaughter stated. After her comments on harsher punishments for big companies that seem to weasel their ways out of antitrust laws, Slaughter called for higher tolerance for litigation risk, more specifically, declining a settlement that doesn’t entirely correct harm. She also communicated how we all must construct the basis for success in new models and more aggressive enforcement to be enacted.

Georgetown Law tech law and policy experts converged together on Friday, January 29, 2021, to discuss wide-ranged topics relating to technology, speech, and regulations in a democratic society. David Vladeck, Erin Carroll, Hillary Brill, and Anupam Chander were the representative speakers on this discussion streamed live over Facebook.

The discussion began with revisiting the tragic siege of the United States capitol that took place on January 6, 2021. Before the siege, on many different platforms (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) President Donald Trump continued to post disputes about the presidential election, specifically mentioning voter fraud. With there being no evidence to verify these disputes, Trump’s campaign for president for a second term was over. Yet it took a violent storming of our nation’s capital to make the world realize that the words on social media and the internet do, in fact, have an effect and insight riots and violence. Any different social media platforms suspended or banned Donald Trump’s account from their sites including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Thus began the great deplatforming.

Why this deplatforming is legal for big tech companies like Google and Apple is because these companies are not in affiliation with the government. This means that the First Amendment is not valid if not stated in their terms of service. If the said company feels that their terms of services have been broken by an individual or feels that said individual is a threat to others, companies have the right to deplatform them. When first signing up on the platforms, every user must agree to the companies terms of services, many just seem to not read them beforehand.

Epic Games, creator of the popular multi-platform game Fortnite, has filed a complaint in federal district court seeking injunctive relief after Apple booted the game from its App Store.[1]  The event was kicked off when Epic Games introduced the ability to pay for in-app purchases directly through Epic Games, rather than through Apple’s in-app payment processing.  Apple requires that any in-app purchases for apps available in Apple’s App Store must be processed by Apple and that Apple collects a 30% commission on such sales.

Apple’s 30% commission has attracted criticism from app developers claiming that the commission is unfair and a product of anticompetitive practices.  Developers must create apps for a particular operating system (“OS”), and in the case of iPhones and iPads, that includes the iPhone OS (“iOS”).  Apps developed for the iOS must be specifically programmed and, as such, cannot be used for Android OS, Windows OS, or even Mac OS.  Once the app is developed for the iOS, the app is solely distributed through Apple’s App Store, where apps compete against each other for consumer selection.

Epic Games described in their complaint that there are two markets in which Apple has engaged in anticompetitive conduct.  The first is in the app-distribution market, where Apple’s App Store is the only method by which developers can sell their products to consumers.  Second, Apple has engaged in anticompetitive conduct in the in-app payment processing market by not allowing other methods of payment processing.

This week, a United States District Court approved the Department of Justice’s move to terminate the consent decrees (known as the Paramount Decrees) entered into by the government and major movie production and distribution companies nearly 70 years ago.

In 1938, the Department of Justice brought an antitrust action against several companies involved in the production and distribution of motion pictures—including Paramount, after which the decrees are named—alleging that their conduct of led to monopoly power in the distribution market for first-run motion pictures and conspiracies to fix licensing practices, including admission prices, run categories, and “clearances” for substantially all theaters located in the United States.

The consent decrees aimed at preventing film producers and distributors from using their positions to engage in anticompetitive conduct such as granting exclusive licenses based on geography or by tying multiple films into one theatrical license.  The DOJ announced their decision terminate the ParamountDecrees in November 2019.

On June 26, 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) entered into a settlement agreement that allowed Eldorado Resorts, Inc. (“Eldorado”) to acquire Caesars Entertainment Corporation (“Caesars”) for $17.3 billion.

Background

Eldorado agreed to acquire Caesars for $17.3 billion on June 24, 2019. Eldorado is a provider of casino entertainment and hospitality services, operating 23 casino gaming properties. Caesars is a similar provider, operating 53 casino gaming properties in 14 states and in 5 countries outside the United States.

On May 5, 2020, the FTC approved AbbVie Inc.’s (“AbbVie”) $63 billion acquisition of Allergan plc (“Allergan”) on the condition that the merging parties divest three minor products.  The consent agreement was approved by a 3-2 party line vote.

The FTC has a long history of scrutinizing transactions in the pharmaceutical industry, but Commissioners’ statements demonstrate that they are not on the same page with regards to the analytical approach of analyzing pharmaceutical mergers and how to remedy the competitive problems that are identified.

The three Republican Commissioners in the majority adhere to the traditional framework, which examines actual competition between existing treatments and potential competition between existing and pipeline treatments, and then tailors very narrow remedies to address those competitive overlaps.

Beginning in March 2018, President Trump issued proclamations imposing duties on steel and aluminum imports into the United States.  In response, one company filed a complaint last week alleging that the administration of these duties is unconstitutional.  Thyssenkrupp Materials, NA, Inc. and several of its related operating divisions, filed a complaint with the Court of International Trade (CIT) last week seeking to challenge the Section 232 duties.

The complaint alleges improper administration of the exclusion request process.  The Presidential Proclamations imposing the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum imports indicated that the Department of Commerce be permitted to “exclude from any adopted import restrictions” certain steel and aluminum “articles.”   However, the final rules promulgated by the Commerce Department approve exclusions only to the “individual or organization that submitted the request” and that “[o]ther individuals or organizations that wish to submit an exclusion request for steel or aluminum product that has already been the subject of an approved exclusion request may request an exclusion under this supplement.”

As a result, the complaint alleges that the Commerce Department has unfairly and arbitrarily granted exclusions of steel and aluminum products to some requesters, yet the same products imported by a different party may have to pay the duties on items subject to Section 232.   Thyssenkrupp lists 27 non-exhaustive subheadings under which it has imported since the Section 232 duties went into effect.  While Thyssenkrupp paid duties on these imports, the complaint alleges that other companies had the benefit of having their products under the same subheadings excluded from the duties.

McDonald’s couldn’t get its no-poach claims dismissed for lack of standing so it will have to continue to litigate allegations that it drove down wages by enforcing a “no poach” agreement barring different franchise locations from hiring one another’s workers.  The case is  Turner v. McDonald’s, USA LLC, N.D. Ill., No. 19-cv-5524, 4/24/20 which is consolidated with Deslandes v. McDonald’s, USA, LLC, N.D. Ill., No. 17-cv-4857.
McDonald’s arguments were limited because of past decision in Deslandes.  In Deslandes, the court held that the plaintiff employees plausibly alleged that the franchises’ no-poach restraints could be found unlawful under a quick-look analysis so McDonald’s did not move to dismiss for failure to state a claim.  
The Northern District court rejected McDonald’s argument that the lead plaintiff lacked standing because she was never denied a job based on the no-poach policy.  The Northern District’s opinion stated that “[t]he argument misses the point of plaintiff’s alleged injury: Plaintiff alleges she suffered depressed wages.” The court added that “[p]laintiff’s claim is akin to a supplier who sells at a reduced price due to the anti-competitive behavior of a cartel of buyers.”  The court also found that complaint sufficiently supported the claim that the policy’s effects could be isolated from broader economic conditions like the unemployment rate.  The court added that “[p]laintiff’s causation allegations are plausible due to basic principles of economics.”  Indeed, “[i]f fewer employers compete for the same number of employees, wages will be lower than if a greater number of employers are competing for those employees.”  So, the case will move forward.
The suit is part of a wave of challenges to franchise no-poach provisions amid considerable uncertainty about their legality.  Franchise employees have filed a number of private class actions in federal courts across the country. The complaints challenge the use of no-poach agreements in franchise agreements, with lawsuits pending against several fast-food restaurant chains, tax preparation services (e.g., H&R Block), car repair services (e.g., Jiffy Lube) and other franchise-based businesses that include broad no-poach clauses in their franchise agreements.  The private actions typically allege that agreements among the franchisor and franchisees to avoid poaching employees violate Section 1 of the Sherman Act and call for per se treatment or, in the alternative, quick-look review of the alleged conduct.
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