The Antitrust Week In Review

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

Apple Depicts Qualcomm as a Shady Monopolist in $1B Lawsuit.  Apple is suing mobile chip maker Qualcomm for $1 billion in a patent fight pitting the iPhone maker against one of its major suppliers.  The 100-page complaint filed Friday in a San Diego federal court depicts Qualcomm as a greedy monopolist abusing its power in a key segment of the mobile chip market to extort royalties for iPhone innovations that have nothing to do with Qualcomm’s technology.

EU Antitrust Regulators Welcome Amazon, Apple Audiobook Deal.  A decision by Amazon and Apple to scrap all exclusivity obligations in the supply and distribution of audiobooks will likely boost competition, EU antitrust regulators said on Thursday.  The companies announced their decision on Jan. 5 after talks with the European Commission and the German Federal Cartel Office.  Such curbs had prompted a complaint from the German Publishers and Booksellers Association to both regulators, triggering an investigation by the German enforcer in November 2015.

FTC Not Sold on Walgreens’ Plan to Win Nod for Rite Aid Deal: Bloomberg.  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is not satisfied with Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.’s plan to divest stores to win antitrust clearance for its acquisition of Rite Aid Corp, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.  The FTC is not convinced that Walgreen’s proposal to sell 865 drugstores to Fred’s Inc. would do enough to preserve competition that would be lost in the $9.4 billion tie-up, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

U.S. Top Court Rejects Banks over Libor Antitrust Lawsuits.   The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed private antitrust lawsuits brought by investors including big U.S. cities accusing major banks of conspiring to manipulate the pivotal Libor benchmark interest rate to move forward.  The justices rejected an appeal filed by a group of banks including Bank of America Corp., Deutsche Bank AG, UBS AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. of a May 2016 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that allowed various lawsuits against them to proceed.