John Kavanagh

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On January 18, 2022, Lina Khan, the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Jonathan Kanter, the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), held a joint press conference to announce that the agencies would be requesting comments on considerations for new horizontal and vertical merger…

A federal district court in Colorado last week handed the Department of Justice (DOJ) its second victory in its fight to criminally prosecute allegedly unlawful labor agreements, holding that alleged non-solicitation (or “no poach”) agreements among the defendants and their competitors constituted per se violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

The ruling is…

The US Department of Justice announced last month that it is requesting public comment on an updated draft policy statement on standards-essential patents (SEP). The December 6, 2021 draft statement was issued pursuant to the Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy on July 9, 2021. The draft statement seeks to modify a…

One year after the first criminal indictment for wage-fixing, a Texas federal district court has ruled that an agreement to fix wages is a per se violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

While over the last century the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have developed a robust body of case law interpreting…

The Biden administration has made promoting competition a top priority, as reflected in President Biden’s July executive order on competition. (For a complete description of the executive order and developments in its implementation, please visit Steptoe’s Executive Order on Competition Tracker). This priority is reflected in appointments that President Biden has made to the…

No-poach and wage-fixing agreements – arrangements between companies seeking to prevent or limit the hiring of each other’s employees, or to suppress the wages and/or benefits of their respective current employees are not only currently under the spotlight in the US, but have also been subject to scrutiny by antitrust authorities in the European Union…

Steptoe’s Antitrust practice hosted a complimentary webinar on antitrust enforcement in the Biden administration. Click here to access the recording. 

During the webinar, the team compared and contrasted enforcement priorities and actions from the Trump administration with the positions the Biden administration might take that are informed by campaign proposals and actions so far. The…

As we predicted in Steptoe’s client webinar last week on “Antitrust Enforcement in the Biden Administration – What We Know from The First 100 Days,” on April 22, 2021 the US Supreme Court put an end to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) longstanding practice under § 13(b) of the FTC Act of seeking disgorgement or restitution orders in cases brought by the agency in federal courts.
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Continue Reading Supreme Court: FTC May Not Seek Restitution Directly in Federal Court