The Antitrust Week In Review

Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.

American Express Can Stop Merchants From Steering Clients to Other Cards.  American Express will be able to prevent businesses from pushing customers toward competing credit cards after all.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that American Express could stop merchants that accept its cards from encouraging customers to use rival payment cards that charge the stores lower transaction fees.  The decision reversed a lower court’s 2015 ruling that such restrictions violated federal antitrust law.

Salesforce Urges EU to Probe Microsoft, Linkedin Antitrust Issues.  U.S. software company Salesforce called on EU regulators on Thursday to investigate antitrust issues related to Microsoft’s $26 billion bid for social network LinkedIn.  Microsoft is expected to seek EU antitrust approval in the coming weeks for its largest ever deal.  Salesforce, which lost out on the bidding for LinkedIn, urged competition authorities to go beyond a simple review, saying the deal threatens innovation and competition.

Qualcomm to Fight EU Antitrust Charge at November 10 Hearing: Sources.  U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm will attempt to fend off EU antitrust charges at a hearing on Nov. 10 that it used anticompetitive methods to squeeze out a rival, sources  said on Friday.  The European Commission may take Qualcomm’s arguments at the hearing into account in the case, which could delay the Commission’s decision and possible fine against the company if it is found to have infringed EU antitrust rules.  Qualcomm requested the closed-door hearing nine months after the European Commission accused it of forcing British phone software maker Icera out of the market by selling certain baseband chipsets below cost between 2009 and 2011.

Judge Dismisses Scouts’ Lawsuit Against Major League Baseball.  A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit accusing Major League Baseball’s 30 teams of conspiring not to poach each other’s scouts and refusing to pay them overtime.  Citing baseball’s longstanding antitrust exemption, U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe in Manhattan dismissed class action claims by Jordan Wyckoff and Darwin Cox, former scouts for the Kansas City Royals and Colorado Rockies, respectively.  According to the complaint, the teams colluded to reduce competition by agreeing not to cold-call or otherwise recruit each other’s scouts without their employers’ permission, and misclassifying scouts as exempt from federal wage-and-hour laws.