By David Scupp

The participants in the highly anticipated, and potentially transformative, antitrust trial In re Student Athlete Name and Likeness Licensing Litigation spent their first week of trial grappling with the myths and realities of college athletics.

Plaintiffs, led by former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon, challenge the NCAA’s rules denying compensation to college athletes for use of their name and likeness in television broadcasts, rebroadcasts, game clips, and video games. To win, plaintiffs will have to overcome the NCAA’s “amateurism” justification for restricting its athletes’ compensation – a defense that the NCAA has employed successfully for decades. This will be one of, if not the, primary battlegrounds in the case. Much of the testimony heard during the first week of trial focused on this issue.

Plaintiffs opened their case by calling O’Bannon himself. His testimony sought to debunk the “myth” of the “student athlete” that participates in college athletics merely as an “avocation.” He explained that at UCLA academics were not a priority, with the 40 to 45 hours he spent per week on basketball related activities, dwarfing the 12 hours per week he spent studying. O’Bannon asserted that he attended UCLA to play basketball, and only “masqueraded” as a student. He also made clear that he does not see college athletes as “amateurs.”

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A View from Constantine Cannon’s London Office

By Irene Fraile

The General Court of the European Union has dismissed Intel’s appeal of the European Commission´s decision fining the computer chip manufacturer a record 1.06 billion euros for breaching EU competition law.

The European Commission imposed the fine on Intel in May 2009, after finding that Intel abused its dominant position in the x86 CPU microprocessors market by attempting to foreclose Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), its main rival, between 2002 and 2007.

According to the Commission’s complaint, which was filed in 2000, Intel (a) had conditioned rebates to strategically important customers on their agreeing to source all, or almost all, of their supplies from Intel, and (b) had paid certain customers (HP, Acer, Lenovo) to halt, delay or limit the launch of specific products incorporating chips from AMD. The Commission also concluded that Intel had attempted to conceal these anticompetitive practices, which formed part of a long-term strategy to squeeze AMD out of the market.

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A View from Constantine Cannon’s London Office

By Natalia Mikolajczyk and Richard Pike

Major container shipping companies are attempting to resolve the European Commission’s antitrust probe into their practice of publicly announcing price increases.

The two biggest players in the container shipping market, A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S and Mediterranean Shipping Company, hope to end the proceedings without paying any fines, according to news reports.

Since 2009, container liner shipping companies have been publicly announcing their plans to increase prices, often through press releases available on company websites.  Between 2009 and 2013, carriers on the benchmark Asia-to-Europe route gave advance notice, via press release, of at least 34 rate increases.  These announcements, which were made several times a year, included information on the amount of the rate increase and the date of implementation.

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By Matthew L. Cantor and Allison F. Sheedy

Judge Sue L. Robinson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware has denied a motion for summary judgment on damages in ZF Meritor LLC and Meritor Transmission Corporation v. Eaton Corporation, setting up the long-running antitrust case for a trial on damages that is slated to start on June 23, 2014.

Plaintiffs are now free to seek the full $800 million they claim as damages, which, after trebling, would total $2.4 billion.  Plaintiffs have already won a jury verdict on liability that found that Defendant Eaton Corporation, an electrical and hydraulic systems maker, violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act by entering into unlawful exclusive dealing agreements.

The plaintiffs are Meritor Transmission Corp. and an extinct joint venture between Meritor and a German manufacturer, which sold manual transmission systems to truck manufacturers.  Plaintiffs claimed that Eaton excluded their joint venture from the market by entering into long-term arrangements with major American truck manufacturers.  Plaintiffs alleged that these long-term arrangements—which included loyalty “discounts” that plaintiffs claimed were pricing penalties—were actually unlawful exclusive dealing agreements.

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