The Antitrust Week In Review

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

U.S. top court asks Justice Department for views in Apple antitrust case.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Trump administration for its views on whether to hear Apple Inc’s bid to avoid a class-action lawsuit accusing the tech giant of inflating consumer prices by charging illegally high commissions on iPhone software sales through its App Store.  The justices are considering whether to take up Apple’s appeal of a lower court ruling that allowed the proposed class-action suit alleging it violated federal antitrust law to proceed.  Apple said the case should be thrown out because only developers of the apps who were charged the commissions, not consumers, should be entitled to bring such a suit.

U.S. Justice Dept Official Should Not Review AT&T/Time Warner Deal: Senator.  U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Thursday urged the Justice Department’s top antitrust official to recuse himself from an ongoing review of AT&T Inc’s planned $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc.  She urged Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Makan Delrahim, who was confirmed late last month, not to take part in the review because of his previous statement that the merger did not pose a “major antitrust problem.”  “Your refusal to recuse yourself will undermine public confidence in the division’s ability to reach an unbiased final decision in the matter,” Warren wrote in the letter.

Taiwan fines Qualcomm $774 million for antitrust violations. Qualcomm Inc faces an antitrust fine in Taiwan, the latest in a years-long streak of regulatory setbacks to its business model that comes as it also fights U.S. regulators and iPhone maker Apple Inc in court over many of the same legal issues.  The Taiwan Fair Trade Commission said on Wednesday it would fine Qualcomm T$23.4 billion ($774.14 million) for anti-trust violations of its chip technology.  The Commission said in a Chinese-language statement that Qualcomm had a monopoly over the chip market for several so-called modem technologies, which provide wireless data connectivity for mobile phones, and refused to license its technology to other industry players.

EU says wants Russia’s Gazprom to sweeten antitrust concessions. The European Commission wants Russian gas giant Gazprom to make more concessions in order to end a six-year long antitrust investigation, the Commission said on Friday after another round of talks.  Gazprom said progress was made during the meeting.  The comments by the EU competition authority came after Gazprom deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev met EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager to discuss the case in Brussels.