Collins | Is The Antitrust Free Ride Over For Big Tech?
Facebook and Google lead the media industry as companies being most heavily targeted by the FTC, Congress and even the Biden Administration. The central question at the heart of scores of lawsuits files in the past year: Have companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft become too powerful, and do they exercise anticompetitive practices?
By Mary Collins | May 14, 2021 | 5:28 a.m. ET.
In 1978, Robert Bork, who was then a professor at Yale Law School, wrote
The Antitrust Paradox, which argued that antitrust enforcement should focus primarily if not solely on whether consumers were helped or hurt, even more than whether a proposed merger diminished competition. Since that time, a time in which regulators prohibited common newspaper and broadcast ownership in the same market, limited the number of broadcast outlets under one owner, and regulators broke up AT&T, the pendulum has swung the other way. S
Akiko Fujita
May 6, 2021, 9:19 AM
The Facebook (FB) oversight board’s decision to uphold an indefinite ban on former President Trump’s account renewed calls for antitrust action against the social media giant Wednesday. But one lawmaker spearheading the charge to reshape the country’s antitrust law says Trump should be banned permanently.
Speaking to Yahoo Finance, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D, MN) said Trump’s refusal to admit defeat in the 2020 presidential election, and continued lies about election fraud are reason enough to ban him from social media platforms, altogether.
“He is the ultimate conveyor of misinformation, he s a disinformer in chief. He is the one that basically still will not admit that he lost the election and keeps putting out theories that literally undermine our democracy itself,” Klobuchar said. “It’s not like he’s changed his tune in terms of undermining democracy.”
US antitrust enforcers have seen a major spike in Hart-Scott-Rodino HSR premerger filings. European Commission is focusing on green killer acquisitions, highlighting the interplay between the EU competition rules and the European Union’s environmental protection objectives.
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The US Supreme Court ruled last week that the Federal Trade Commission doesn’t have the authority to seek equitable monetary relief in federal court under Section 13(b) of the FTC Act in
The text of Section 13(b) expressly allows the Commission to seek injunctive relief (temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions in aid of administrative proceedings, as well as permanent injunctions in “proper cases”), but is silent on whether the agency can also seek equitable monetary relief. Nonetheless, courts for years have ordered consumer redress, including disgorgement and restitution under Section 13(b) in response to agency requests.