December 2019 - II

Global Digital Reports In this edition of the Antitrust Chronicle, we take a satellite view over the approaches that regulators and legal systems worldwide have taken to breakneck developments in the digital economy.

December 2019 - I

Inequality In this edition of the Antitrust Chronicle, we present a set of pieces that deal with the interaction between antitrust enforcement and the pursuit of economic equality, which is to the forefront of modern political discourse. In economic jargon, no terms are as fraught as the notions of “winners” and “losers.” From Rawlsian theory to the concept of Pareto optimality, these ideas are interwoven into every area of economic discourse, and the specific domain of antitrust law is no exception.

November 2019 - II

Corporate Compliance In this issue of the CPI Antitrust Chronicle, we explore the implications of the new U.S. Department of Justice incentives for corporate antitrust compliance programs. On July 11 of this year, the Antitrust Division of the DOJ announced that it would consider the nature of a company’s antitrust compliance efforts when bringing criminal charges or imposing sentences for antitrust violations. This, of course, provides a powerful incentive for companies to invest in such programs.

November 2019 - I

Consumer Welfare… A Technocrat & A Populist Walk Into A Bar In this issue of the CPI Antitrust Chronicle, we tackle the ongoing debate surrounding the consumer welfare standard in antitrust law. Since the rise to pre-eminence in the 1970s of the U.S. Chicago School, and the “more economic approach” to competition law enforcement in the EU in the 1990s, the consensus was, for a long time, that the overarching goal of antitrust rules should be to protect “consumer welfare.”

October 2019 - II

EU Trends: Looking Back...Looking Forward In Roman times, Janus was the god of beginnings and endings. For this reason, he was usually depicted as having two faces: one looks to the past, and the other to the future. But Janus was also the god of transitions. With the first term of Margarethe Vestager’s tenure as Competition Commissioner coming to an end, and her second about to begin, in this edition of the CPI Antitrust Chronicle, we take a Janus-like look at enforcement trends in Europe, as we transition from one Vestager administration to the next.

October 2019 - I

CRESSE Insights 2019 The October 2019 CPI Antitrust Chronicle includes articles based on presentations from Special Policy Sessions (“SPS”) and invited lectures of the 14th Annual CRESSE Conference organized on July 5-7 in Rhodes, Greece.

September 2019 - II

Innovation & IP The September 2019 CPI Antitrust Chronicle addresses issues related to the sixth annual LeadershIP Conference, which took place in Washington D.C. on March 26, 2019. The conference covered issued related to: (1) The impact of 5G; (2) The IP Policy Landscape: US and The World; (3) IP and Antitrust: Global Agency Dynamics; and (4) International Antitrust: What Rules and Whose Standards?

September 2019 - I

MFN Clauses, Loyalty Programs & Fidelity Rebates For this edition of the CPI Antitrust Chronicle, we turn our focus to the antitrust treatment of MFN clauses, loyalty programs, and fidelity rebates. All three types of practices are “classics” in the antitrust canon, but the advent of digital platforms has raised novel questions.

August 2019 - II

State Attorneys General CPI is pleased to present our second Antitrust Chronicle for August 2019 focusing on recent developments from state attorneys general. We kick things off in this edition with a CPI Talks… interview with Sarah Oxenham Allen, Chair of the National Association of Attorneys General Antitrust Taskforce and Senior Assistant Attorney General and Antitrust Unit Manager at Office of the Virginia Attorney General.

August 2019 - I

Editorial Board Antipasto. This compilation of articles covers a variety of jurisdictions and antitrust topics including EU competition issues in the digital era, prescription drug pricing, NCAA student-athlete compensation cases, non-horizontal mergers in China, antitrust whistleblower protection, and investigations & mergers in digital markets from a developing world’s viewpoint, among others.

July 2019 - II

AT&T/Time Warner… What’s Next for Vertical Mergers? The July 2019 CPI Antitrust Chronicle features articles on vertical mergers with a focus on the AT&T/Time Warner merger case. Indeed, the AT&T/Time Warnerdecision was one of the most eagerly anticipated antitrust decisions in recent years. Was this just a one off case or is the Justice Department signaling its intention to adopt a more aggressive posture towards vertical integration?

July 2019 - I

Arbitration & Antitrust This month’s Antitrust Chronicle looks at the intersection of arbitration and competition law in the EU and internationally. Over the recent few years, arbitration has developed into a means for private enforcement of EU competition law claims. Although some early case law showed a certain reluctance to make use of arbitration clauses in competition law damage claims, a few EU jurisdictions have recently moved towards more arbitration friendly solutions. But what are some of the conditions and limitations?

June 2019 - II

Ohio v. American Express: A Year Later… On June 25, 2018, the Supreme Court sided in a 5-4 decision with American Express in a lawsuit over rules it imposes on merchants who accept its cards. The Supreme Court’s decision in Ohio v. American Express addressed a number of important issues concerning multisided platforms: for instance, whether each side of a platform is a separate relevant product market and whether a prima facie assessment of competitive harm must incorporate the impact to consumers on all sides of a platform.

June 2019 - II

Damages & Fines This month’s CPI Chronicle focuses on antitrust damages and fines, with particular consideration to cartel damages. Internationally, there is a patchwork of private and public enforcement of antitrust laws with varying damages and fines. Does this enforcement reflect clear concepts of justice and compensation and concepts that are consistent with a fundamental notion that a core purpose of antitrust enforcement (both public and private), and damages and fines, is to deter conduct?

May 2019 - II

Common Ownership Revisited The June 2017 CPI Antitrust Chronicle was centered on the policy debates around Index Funds as a possible “New Antitrust Frontier.” Since then, an intense debate rages on over common ownership and possible competitive effects. We decided to revisit this topic and get a sense of how the debate is progressing.

May 2019 - I

The Healthcare Sector: Transatlantic Views The Healthcare Sector continues to be fertile ground for antitrust issues, whether in the case of hospital or pharmaceutical mergers (vertical, cross-market, etc.), pay for delay issues, patent settlements, or parallel exports, etc. CPI is pleased to present out latest Antitrust Chronicle focusing on some of these hotly discussed topics in the Healthcare Sector in the United States and Europe.

April 2019 - II

Online Advertising Speaking at the 2005 IAB Engage conference in London, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said: “The future of advertising is the internet.” With the advent of the digital economy, and advertising shifting from newspapers, radio, and television to the internet, we have also seen a shift in the regulatory approach of some governments from a focus on protecting consumers from “false advertising,” to considering online advertising from an antitrust lens.

April 2019 - I

Public Procurement The interaction between competition law and public procurement has increasingly been in the international spotlight in recent years. Through competitive public procurement and bidding, governments ideally can procure goods and services at market price (saving public funds), encourage small and medium-sized enterprises, and foster innovation, among other policy goals.

March 2019 - II

Year of the Pig: Antitrust in China We are delighted to release our CPI Antitrust Chronicle issue for March 2019, “Year of the Pig: Antitrust in China,” and present you ten articles as a tribute to the 10th Anniversary of the Anti-Monopoly Law.

March 2019 - I

LeadershIP EU – Innovation, IP & Competition Challenges The March 2019 CPI Antitrust Chronicle addresses issues related to the second annual LeadershIP EU Conference, “Innovation, IP and Competition Challenges for Global Businesses in the 21st Century,” which took place in Brussels, Belgium on November 13, 2018. The panelists at the conference came from the private and public sectors: regulators, academics, and private practitioners.

February 2019 - II

Data Protection For the second CPI Antitrust Chronicle for February 2019, we turn to a very “spannendes Thema”…the intersection of data protection and antitrust laws. This is a subject that has been “intensiv diskutiert,” especially after the recent, highly anticipated, news from Germany’s Bundeskartellamt in its Facebook ruling. We have a great group of articles that discuss this recent decision in detail and its possible ramifications. In addition, we have contributions from the U.S. and Brazil.

February 2019 - I

Private Enforcement The first CPI Antitrust Chronicle for February 2019 looks at the issue of private enforcement of antitrust laws from the view point of different jurisdictions. As opposed to public enforcement of competition laws, private enforcement, according to the OECD, can be defined generally as “litigation initiated by an individual, a legal entity, an organisation or a public entity…

January 2019 - II

25 Years of Leniency… Where Do Things Stand? It is generally accepted that leniency programs are an important and effective tool in the fight against cartels. That is the starting point of this month’s CPI Chronicle. But from this starting point, many questions and topics of discussion arise.

January 2019 - I

Behavioral Antitrust We are pleased to kick off 2019 with an edition of the CPI Antitrust Chronicle devoted to the latest developments in Behavioral Antitrust. Behavioral economics is generally defined as “a method of economic analysis that applies psychological insights into human behavior to explain economic decision-making.”