The Antitrust Law seeks to prevent anti-competitive actions within markets to protect consumer welfare and ensure opportunities for all businesses. To achieve these objectives, it prohibits practices that restrict free competition between business entities, such as the creation of cartels, bans anti-competitive practices of firms that lead to their dominance in particular markets, and controls mergers and acquisitions of large companies. However, in this age of rapid innovation, especially in the cyberspace economy, it’s essential that these practices be regulated to serve consumers' interests and promote competition. Technology is making the global environment more interconnected leading to legal antitrust issues that may not have been conceived before. Attorneys need to be in the know on an up to the minute basis in order to properly advise their clients on these issues.
The Knowledge Group is producing a webcast to help attorneys deal with the growing global environment brought about by technology. Learn about new regulations and best practices on this topic. Antitrust & Technology for Attorneys: Dealing with a Global Anti-Competitive Environment LIVE Webcast is a must attend event for Attorneys who practice this type of law.
Course Level: Intermediate
Prerequisite: None
Method Of Presentation: Group-Based-Internet
Developer: The Knowledge Conference
Recommended CLE/CPE Hours: 2.0
Important Note: Your State Bar or Accounting Board will make the final determination with respect to continuing education credit. If you are applying for CLE credit in Texas you must register 20 days before the event date or you will not be able to obtain CLE credit.
Advance Preparation: Print and review course materials
Course Code: 093912
Alden F. Abbott
Deputy Director for Special Projects, Office of International Affairs
Dr. Timothy Daniel
Senior Vice President, (Former Assistant Director, Antitrust, FTC’s Bureau of Economics)
Albert A. Foer
President
Hartmut Schneider
Partner
Alden F. Abbott, Deputy Director for Special Projects, Office of International Affairs, Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
- FTC competition law enforcement will continue to focus on anticompetitive payments from drug companies that delay entry of lower cost generic drugs.
- Vigorous antitrust enforcement is more than ever important in a period of economic difficulty.
- Cartels -- competitors that secretly fix prices -- remain a major source of antitrust concern to antitrust enforcers worldwide.
- Antitrust enforcers are concerned with maintaining strong competitive conditions in high tech sectors of the economy.
Albert A. Foer, President, American Antitrust Institute
- Was the Antitrust Modernization Commission right in concluding that "the new economy" requires no new antitrust approaches?
– The rise of systems competition: do we have the right focus?
– The key role of Interoperability: do we have the right theories?
– The challenge of globally defined markets: do we have the right institutions?
– The extension of private enforcement internationally: how will we deal with the added complexity?
Dr. Timothy Daniel, Senior Vice President, (Former Assistant Director, Antitrust, FTC’s Bureau of Economics), NERA Economic Consulting
- The adequacy of current frameworks and institutions to address antitrust issues in fast moving, high-tech, global markets
- Economic approaches
- Mergers in markets where innovation is a potential competitive issue
- Licensing arrangements, broadly defined, which can encompass licensing/cross-licensing arrangements, patent pools, and combinations of intellectual property for purposes of
developing and supporting industry standards
- Internet advertising – recent investigations by the FTC (Google/DoubleClick) and the Antitrust Division (Google/Yahoo! and Microsoft/Yahoo!) indicate that some combinations and
practices can raise antitrust concerns. Key economic concepts: look for the bottlenecks and ask whether combination or practices might impede access by suppliers of goods/services to
consumers (and vice versa)
- Economic principles that should underlie remedies in Section 2 cases
Hartmut Schneider, Partner, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP
A. Globalized, hi-tech markets raise challenges in rationalizing enforcement among multiple jurisdictions.
1. Beyond Empagran: What is the extra-territorial reach of the U.S. antitrust laws where the situs of the transaction giving rise to a claim or the effects thereof are ambiguous. E.g.:
- Claims arising from transactions involving goods purchased and delivered overseas under contracts negotiated in the United States with a U.S. company.
- Alleged price fixing in foreign markets of inputs incorporated into products ultimately imported into the United States.
2. The most interventionist common enforcer concern:
- Is it appropriate for the conduct of participants in global markets to be governed by the most interventionist enforcement authority?
- How do we appropriately balance jurisdictions' sovereignty rights and interests in protecting their own consumers with considerations of international
comity and efficient regulation of global markets?
B. Rules versus standards and the Leegin case:
- How differing views regarding the benefits of bright-line rules versus more flexible standards influenced the majority and dissent in Leegin.
- Legislative repeal efforts versus "common-law" development of the antitrust statutes.
- Competition and Antitrust Lawyers
- General Counsel
- In-house Counsel
- Economists
- Corporate Executives
- Compliance Officers
- Legal and Regulatory Affairs
This is a must attend event to everyone to hear the newest updates on antitrust issues and how to deal a global anti-competitive environment
- Detailed guidance explained by the most qualified key leaders & experts
- Hear directly from key regulators & thought leaders
- Interact directly with panel during Q&A