On January 19, 2017, the Federal Trade Commission announced its annual revisions to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act ("HSR") jurisdictional thresholds, increasing key thresholds approximately 3.3% to reflect changes in the gross...more
1/25/2017
/ Acquisitions ,
Antitrust Provisions ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Filing Fees ,
Hart-Scott-Rodino Act ,
Interlocking Directorate ,
Mergers ,
Reporting Requirements ,
The Clayton Act ,
Threshold Requirements ,
Voting Securities
1. Transition to a Trump Administration is top of the agenda -
President-elect Donald Trump's DOJ and FTC transition team appointments and public short list of candidates to run the agencies indicate that antitrust...more
1/12/2017
/ Antitrust Division ,
Big Data ,
CFIUS ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
EU ,
European Commission ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Hart-Scott-Rodino Act ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Human Resources Professionals ,
Mergers ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Trump Administration ,
UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ,
Wage-Fixing
Obama Administration antitrust enforcers have faced criticism over the last year for not being sufficiently aggressive, allegedly leading to concentrated industries to the detriment of consumers. The Department of Justice and...more
The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are seeking public comment on a proposed update to the agencies' Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual...more
On July 29, 2016, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC or Commission) announced its long-awaited decision in its LabMD enforcement action. The Commissioners reversed the decision of an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) and held...more
8/5/2016
/ Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) ,
Covered Entities ,
Data Breach ,
Data Security ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
FTC Act ,
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ,
LabMD ,
Likelihood of Harm ,
Popular ,
Section 5 ,
Unfair or Deceptive Trade Practices
The Department of Justice Antitrust Division announced on July 12 that ValueAct Capital agreed to pay a record $11 million civil penalty to settle claims that ValueAct purchased over $2.5 billion in Halliburton and Baker...more
Failure to comply with the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 ("HSR Act") is about to get a lot more expensive.
Effective August 1, 2016, the maximum civil penalty for noncompliance with the premerger...more
On June 22, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") announced that it would settle its first-ever enforcement action against a mobile advertising company, InMobi. InMobi agreed, subject to court approval of the settlement, to...more
On March 30 the US Federal Trade Commission filed suit in federal court alleging that settlements of patent litigation in the pharmaceutical industry in which a pioneer firm agrees not to market an "authorized generic"...more
4/7/2016
/ Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
FTC v Actavis ,
Generic Drugs ,
Hatch-Waxman ,
No-AG Agreement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Pay-For-Delay ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Popular ,
Reverse Payment Settlement Agreements
Less than three months after the Federal Trade Commission issued new guidelines on native advertising, the agency announced an enforcement action against national retailer Lord & Taylor.
The FTC alleged on March 16, 2016...more
Filing thresholds under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act will increase by about 2.5%, effective February 25, 2016, raising the level that a transaction's value must exceed to trigger a filing from $76.3 million to $78.2...more
Attention in the US during 2016 will be on the presidential campaign, and the election in November will bring a change in the "antitrust guard" at the top of the DOJ and FTC – even if a Democrat wins – that will drive the...more
1/12/2016
/ China ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Criminal Penalties ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Disgorgement ,
Drug Pricing ,
EU ,
European Commission ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
FRAND ,
Mergers ,
MOFCOM ,
Patent Assertion Entities ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Pharmaceutical Patents ,
Popular ,
Price-Fixing ,
Standard Essential Patents ,
Technology Sector
Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") charges against the cancer-screening laboratory LabMD, stemming from two data breaches involving sensitive personal information of thousands of consumers were dismissed in a decision made...more
While acquisitions of up to 10% of the voting interest in a target that are made "solely for the purpose of investment" are in many circumstances exempt from Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) reporting requirements, even when the value...more
8/27/2015
/ Acquisitions ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Hart-Scott-Rodino Act ,
Investment Portfolios ,
Premerger Notifications ,
Reporting Requirements ,
Size of Transaction Test ,
Threshold Requirements ,
Voting Securities ,
Yahoo!
Recent antitrust challenges to pharmaceutical companies' efforts to transition patients from drugs nearing the end of their patent life to next-generation drugs have increased the risk of pursuing such "product hopping"...more
In a rare appellate opinion addressing the merits of a merger challenge, the Ninth Circuit last month sided with the Federal Trade Commission, finding that a 2012 merger of two health care providers in Idaho was likely to...more
Filing thresholds under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act will increase by about half a percent (0.5%) effective February 20, 2015. The new, higher thresholds apply to all transactions closing on or after that date but before...more