antitrust
The ostensible purpose of antitrust policy is to promote healthy competition in the marketplace, but antitrust enforcement has largely protected inefficient firms from the threat of competition and deprived consumers of the lower prices they would otherwise enjoy. Thanks to legal scholars like Robert Bork, antitrust enforcement over the past four decades has primarily focused on the most logical place—maximizing benefits for consumers. But Democrats are taking a radical turn from Bork's philosophy by reviving a nearly 90-year-old price discrimination law known as the Robinson-Patman Act, makin...
Reason
Promoting your product is fine, but not if it means throwing shade on competitors, according to the EU. The European Commission today accepted Vifor’s commitments to remedy potential disparagement of a rival product. Those promises are now legally binding and the Commission could issue fines up to 10% of Vifor’s turnover if they’re broken. Brussels worried Vifor had restricted competition by spreading misleading information about the safety of Monofer, an iron deficiency treatment marketed by the company's main competitor, Pharmacosmos. The Commission suspected that actions by Vifor, in some c...
Euronews (English)
In America, we do not punish businesses for their success. We certainly do not punish businesses because their competitors are struggling to keep pace. Sadly, that is exactly what the Department of Justice (DOJ) is attempting to do in its recent lawsuit against Apple. In March, the DOJ, joined by 15 states and the District of Columbia, filed a lawsuit aimed at penalizing Apple for successfully competing in the market for smartphones. However, like much of the Biden administration's approach to antitrust enforcement, the DOJ's lawsuit is focused on punishing Apple for its success rather than ad...
Reason
With former President Donald Trump's pick of Ohio Rep. J.D. Vance as his 2024 running mate, we're likely looking at dark days at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Under President Joe Biden, the FTC—headed by Lina Khan—has aggressively pursued an anti-innovation, anti-tech, anti-big business, and anti-consumer agenda. Khan and her allies in the Biden administration think the consumer welfare standard that has guided antitrust law for decades needs to go. Rather than focus on whether a company's actions or a particular merger will raise prices for consumers, they think antitrust regulators sho...
Reason
Stijn Verrept knew in 2018 that his company needed to find an unconventional solution if they were going to develop a quality smart lamp to detect the motion of an older person’s fall to notify caregivers. Verrept, the founder of Belgian startup Nobi, tried manually calculating the distance a person could fall, mounting cameras to the ceiling or the lamps themselves with no luck. The tech is meant to allow the elderly to stay in their homes. They decided to pivot to artificial intelligence (AI), with the company choosing NVIDIA microchips for their high processing power and the ability to quic...
Euronews (English)
Brussels (Belgium) (AFP) - Microsoft violated EU antitrust rules by bundling its Teams communications app with its popular Office suite, Brussels said on Tuesday, as the US tech giant vowed to do what it takes to address competition concerns. The charge sheet comes after the European Commission, the EU's influential antitrust regulator, launched a probe last year triggered by a 2020 complaint from Slack. The commission informed Microsoft of its "preliminary view" that it had "breached EU antitrust rules" by bundling Teams with its cloud-based Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites, which includ...
AFP
Unbundling Teams from Microsoft Office might not suffice to comply with the EU’s competition rules, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said today (4 June). Last October, the company decided to separate the services after the European Commission launched a formal investigation into the tech giant in July 2023 over concerns that it gave its messaging and videoconferencing app Teams an unfair advantage over its competitors by including it within its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 packages. Speaking at a media roundtable in Brussels, Smith said that despite much being done to resolve the ...
Euronews (English)
Google's pivot to artificial intelligence has news publishers freaking out—and running to the government. "Agency intervention is necessary to stop the existential threat Google poses to original content creators," the News/Media Alliance—a major news industry trade group—wrote in a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It asked the agencies to use antitrust authority "to stop Google's latest expansion of AI Overviews," a search engine innovation that Google has been rolling out recently. Disrupting the Search Status QuoGoogle's plain old top-of-page...
Reason
Airline staff representatives today (28 May) called for Brussels to act rapidly to allow Lufthansa’s €325m purchase of Italy's state-owned ITA Airways stock. The letter seen by Euronews adds to pressure on Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s lead antitrust official, as time runs out for her to take a view on the deal. “A quick and positive decision" on the merger can “signal that you, the EU Commission, are focusing on strength, competitiveness in a fair market environment and growth in Europe,” said the letter, dated 28 May and signed by 11 aviation unions including Germany’s ver.di...
Euronews (English)
After a five-year-long investigation, the EU executive found Mondelēz illegally restricted retailers from sourcing their products from member states where prices were lower, allowing the US packaged food company to maintain higher prices. “This harms consumers who end up paying more for chocolates, biscuits and coffee. It's a key concern to European citizens and even more obvious in times of very high inflation, where many are in a cost of living crisis,” Commission Vice-President Vestager told a press conference today (23 May). She announced a fine of €337.5 for Mondelēz for breaching EU anti...
Euronews (English)
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