Welcome to my blog, where I post commentary on antitrust law and the great antitrust controversies of our times.
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THE WORST ANTITRUST DECISION ON THE BOOKS (By William Markham, © 2015) I have read the briefs and my initial assessment has been confirmed: Judge Buchwald’s infamous decision in the Libor price-fixing cases must be overruled, or else antitrust no longer means...
Here are some key facts to support my analysis of the merger of Comcast and Time-Warner: If the merger were permitted to proceed (even with the promised divestitures), the combined company would have more than 30% of all television subscribers and 33% of all internet...
I am strongly opposed to this proposed merger and think that the Department of Justice will likely act to enjoin it. The court case should be thrilling business drama, and I hope that this time the good guys win. (I am sure that the executives at Comcast and...
After predictably losing at trial in the e-book case, Apple has brought an appeal that apparently received a grave, serious hearing of its seemingly frivolous, non sequitur challenges, which were rightly rejected with little ceremony by Judge Coates during the...
My recent discussion of what to do about Amazon begs a more fundamental question: Is it unlawful monopolization when a firm employs openly predatory or anti-competitive tactics in order to acquire or preserve a monopoly position, even if the firm does not afterwards...
In this note I continue to consider Amazon’s recent heavy-handed treatment of Hachette and other book-publishers by “burying” their books in its system so that customers cannot find them, and by delaying the delivery of these books to the few determined customers who...
To my earlier comments about Amazon in my blog, I add the following points. I have waded into these troubled waters after reading disheartening accounts of Amazon’s shoddy treatment of book publishers, whose books are consigned to the netherworld of Amazon’s site...
Are the antitrust laws implicated by Amazon’s new strategy of depriving sellers of access to its platform unless they offer it market-beating prices that they cannot offer to anyone else? The short answer is that the practice exposes Amazon to arguable but problematic...
Price-fixing merely means that two companies that are genuinely independent of one another have acted in concert to fix, raise, lower or otherwise manipulate the going prices for products or services that they each provide. Price-fixing constitutes a serious, per se...