Jan 2011 Blog o’ Blogs

Our Jan. Blog o’ Blogs looks back at a diverse collection of end-of-the year blogs. Entries taste appropriate wines to serve with the new Horizontal Guidelines; reopen the Google book issue; sketch the future of an Almunist approach; attend the party looking to revisit (not for the last time) minimum pricing; teach South African sausage manufacturing; dial into Brussels; resurrect an antitrust approach for franchises; derive lessons from the financial crisis, and end with a theological debate. Happy New Year, Everyone!

Exchanges of Information and the New Horizontal Guidelines: Barolo or Beaujolais?
Said in other ‘drinking’ terms, the Guidelines look more like a soft-drink rather than soft-law. Stefano Grassani (Kluwer Competition Law Blog)

GBS: Hemphill on Antitrust Analysis

Are we always forced to accept the bitter with the sweet? James Grimmelmann (Laboratorium)

Looking for Signs of an “Almunist” Approach

He would appear to be somewhat less interested in the razzamatazz involved in targeting big corporate names, and more in the detailed mechanics of competition policy and its capacity to mend markets.
Stephen Tupper (Lexology)

States Try to Counter Supreme Court’s Minimum Price Ruling
Trying to sort winners from losers in the wake of the court’s decision. Joan Biskupic (USA Today)

We Can Expect More Antitrust Sausages
“The law requires you not to fixate on the way it was made, but the end product.” Michael Bleby (Business Day, South Africa)

Brussels on the Phone: The iPhone and Competition Policy
Should it therefore be concluded that any move aimed to “level” competition between technology platforms is justified from an economic perspective? Jorge Padilla (Kluwer Competition Law Blog)

Antitrust in Distribution Law: Back in Vogue or Just Hanging On?
Perhaps antitrust claims in franchising are not quite dead yet.
John Arden (Antitrust Connect)

The Financial Crisis: Three Lessons for Antitrust, Parts II and III

Maybe competition policy is less about engineering efficiency and conjecturing about theoretical “what-ifs”, than ensuring that firms remain guided by the right incentives, rooted in healthy rivalry?
Damien Gerard (Kluwer Competition Law Blog)

An Antitrust Challenge to God

Strikingly, no one seems to have considered the possibility of challenging God under Article 106. Alfonso Lamadrid (Chillin’ Competition)