Antitrust

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday sued Intel Corp., accusing the computer chip giant of abusing its market dominance for a decade to stifle competition and strengthen its monopoly. The FTC alleges that Intel has waged a systematic and illegal campaign to shut out rival makers of central processing unit chips, the main brains of a computer, by cutting off their access to the marketplace. In doing so, the agency contends, the world's largest chipmaker has deprived consumers of choice by denying them access to potentially superior chips and lower prices.

The Department of Justice's antitrust case against Microsoft was one of the largest and most carefully watched in history. The courts ruled that Microsoft illegally maintained its monopoly of personal computer operating systems (OS). After years of oversight of a "behavioral remedy," the department's notoriously weak settlement with Microsoft expired Thursday. After the finding of liability and almost a decade of monitoring Microsoft's behavior, the net result has been to leave Microsoft pretty much where it started — with its Windows monopoly intact.

MINNEAPOLIS - United Airlines, Continental, and All Nippon Airways applied for antitrust approval on Wednesday so they can work together more closely on flights across the Pacific. The three carriers already sell tickets on each other's planes as partners in the Star Alliance, which Continental joined in October. But they want to form a joint venture that would strengthen their financial ties. If their immunity application is approved, they would jointly manage trans-Pacific activities, including schedules, prices and sales.

How deep is corporate influence on President Barack Obama? Is there no business request so anticompetitive, so anticonsumer that the administration would be forced to say no? Should the Justice Department's antitrust division (more than 800 employees; average salary of more than $150,000) just go out of business? We're about to find out. If Obama approves AT&T's proposal to buy T-Mobile, he'll have reached a new Washington low in preventing the kind of oligopoly disaster that even conservative economists agree is bad for consumers and bad for innovation.

WASHINGTON -- Initiating a new tactic in the Clinton administration's trade policy, the Justice Department won a settlement yesterday from a British company that keeps the company from preventing U.S. competitors' doing business overseas.The antitrust suit against Pilkington PLC, the world's largest maker of flat glass, accused the British company of monopolizing the technology for making sheets of glass like those used in windowpanes or car windshields.The Justice Department argued that Pilkington fell under U.S. legal jurisdiction because it owns 80 percent of a U.S. glassmaker, Libby-Owens-Ford Co.The case had little to do with the glass market in the United States; instead it sought to ensure that U.S. companies could freely operate abroad.

WASHINGTON -- A divided Supreme Court ruled yesterday that if a business induces city officials to pass new ordinances to shut out or harm a rival company, both the business and the local officials could qualify for immunity from federal antitrust law.So long as the city had been granted authority by a state to pass laws that could reduce competition, the firm that lost out as a result may not sue for antitrust damages under the Sherman Act, the court ruled...

WASHINGTON -- The proposed merger of Bell Atlantic Corp. and the nation's largest cable-television company faces government inquiries that could keep the deal under a legal cloud for years -- with no guarantee of official approval.Within hours of yesterday's announcement of the huge corporate union -- valued at $30 billion or more -- federal officials were questioning the impact on consumers and competitors. One key legislator criticized the deal as a "double whammy" for consumers."This will test the mettle of the Clinton administration in a very early and dramatic way," said Andrew Schwartzman, a communications industry legal analyst and head of the Media Access Project.

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. -- Staples Inc. and Office Depot Inc. said yesterday that they have agreed with a Federal Trade Commission request to extend the antitrust review in Staples' proposed $4.5 billion purchase of Office Depot.The Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period, which was to expire Feb. 25, was pushed back to March 5.That will give the office-supply retailers time to gather additional information the FTC requested, Staples said in a statement.The FTC is talking with other companies to see if they are interested in buying stores that might be sold in order for the transaction to get antitrust approval.

A federal judge in Baltimore will dismiss an antitrust suit filed by Merck Medco Managed Care Inc. against Rite Aid Corp., Giant Food Inc. and other drug chains.In a memo dated Friday, U.S. District Judge Benson E. Legg informed the parties of his intentions to save them the trouble of preparing for the trial, scheduled to begin May 26.A formal order dismissing the case will be filed by the end of the month, he wrote in the memo. The suit claimed the drug chains had conspired in their refusal to participate in a prescription drug plan for 90,000 Maryland state employees and retirees that Medco was to have managed.

WASHINGTON -- A government investigation of the movie studio and theater industry focuses on possible violations of a 51-year-old antitrust settlement that restricts the way films are distributed, sources familiar with the case said yesterday.Late last week, the Justice Department sent information demands to the nation's top film distributors -- including Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc.'s Paramount and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. -- as well as Loews Cineplex Entertainment Corp. and possibly other theater chains, the sources said.

The union representing NFL players pushed away from the negotiating table and decertified Friday, an extreme measure that leaves the federal courts to determine the immediate future of the nation's most popular sports league. Decertifying — dissolving the union — cleared the way for individual players to file antitrust lawsuits against the league, which likely could be barred from locking out those players. In the immediate aftermath of decertification, a group of players that included three of the NFL's most popular quarterbacks — Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees — filed an antitrust lawsuit against the league in U.S. District Court to prevent a lockout.

State attorneys general in Maryland and 32 other states have reached a $173 million settlement with six computer chip manufacturers who were accused in antitrust lawsuits of conspiring to raise prices on their products. Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said the settlement with Micron Technology In, NEC Electronics America Inc., Infineon Technologies, Hynix Semiconductor, Elpida Memory Inc. and Mosel-Vitelic Corp. offers restitution for consumers and state and local government agencies that paid higher prices for computers and other electronics because of the alleged price fixing scheme.

The nation's largest provider of voting equipment will forgo its acquisition of a rival company as part of an antitrust settlement reached with nine states, including Maryland, according to the Department of Justice. Election Systems & Software will divest all assets from its September 2009 purchase of Premier Election Solutions, which was the second-largest voting system company in the country. The acquisition was finalized six days before bids were due to install a new optical scan voting system in Maryland, limiting the state to contracting with ES&S or continuing under the current system, according to the attorney general's office.

MINNEAPOLIS - United Airlines, Continental, and All Nippon Airways applied for antitrust approval on Wednesday so they can work together more closely on flights across the Pacific. The three carriers already sell tickets on each other's planes as partners in the Star Alliance, which Continental joined in October. But they want to form a joint venture that would strengthen their financial ties. If their immunity application is approved, they would jointly manage trans-Pacific activities, including schedules, prices and sales.

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday sued Intel Corp., accusing the computer chip giant of abusing its market dominance for a decade to stifle competition and strengthen its monopoly. The FTC alleges that Intel has waged a systematic and illegal campaign to shut out rival makers of central processing unit chips, the main brains of a computer, by cutting off their access to the marketplace. In doing so, the agency contends, the world's largest chipmaker has deprived consumers of choice by denying them access to potentially superior chips and lower prices.

WASHINGTON -The Obama administration put large companies on notice that it would be tougher on mergers and attempts to stifle competition, restoring the type of aggressive antitrust enforcement of the 1990s that led to the landmark government case against Microsoft Corp. The tenor set Monday by the Justice Department's new antitrust enforcer, Christine Varney, would bring the United States more in line with the European Union and make it tougher for companies that dominate their markets to abuse their power, experts said.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Microsoft Corp. has continued to abuse its dominance of the software market and could be subject to fines, the European Commission said yesterday in a preliminary ruling in its long-running antitrust case against the company. The commission, the administrative arm of the European Union, also said it wants to force Microsoft to disclose the software coding that competitors would need to make their server systems compatible with Windows. In a statement of objections it has sent to Microsoft, the commission repeated accusations that the software company has leveraged its dominant position in computer operating systems to gain a dominance in server systems and music-playback software.

WASHINGTON -- Striking down an antitrust rule nearly a century old, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that it is no longer automatically unlawful for manufacturers and distributors to agree on setting minimum retail prices. The decision will give producers significantly more leeway, though not unlimited power, to dictate retail prices and to restrict the flexibility of discounters. Five justices said the new rule could, in some instances, lead to more competition and better service. But four dissenting justices agreed with the submission of 37 states and consumer groups that the abandonment of the old rule would lead to significantly higher prices and less competition for consumer and other goods.

WASHINGTON -- The record $1.36 billion fine Microsoft Corp. must pay the European Union will not buy the software company much peace. Yesterday's penalty, which amounts to almost one-third of Microsoft's last quarterly profit, officially closes a nine-year antitrust battle with European regulators that has cost the company $2.5 billion in fines. But those regulators are still pursuing two new investigations into the software giant's business practices. They also loom as an obstacle to Microsoft's proposed takeover of Yahoo Inc., which would need approval in Brussels, Belgium, and Washington.