It is well known in the antitrust community that the Justice Department is searching for cases to bring against dominant firms that have violated the antitrust laws.  One such firm may be Monsanto.  In fact, the prices of patented seeds sold by agribusiness giant Monsanto, which make up a majority of the seed market for some staple crops, have roughly doubled in the past decade, leading to new scrutiny by the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.  Given the importance of those crops to the food supply, government antitrust proceedings against Monsanto could potentially have a huge impact.  Most immediately, farmers, biotech firms, and agribusiness competitors of Monsanto such as the Dow Chemical Company, DuPont, BASF or Syngenta AG, may be impacted by any decision made by the Justice Department. 

The specific issue of concern is that Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” soybean and corn seeds, which produce plants that can survive treatment with the company’s popular weed-killer Roundup, comprise 93% and 80% of their respective markets.  Prices for these seeds have reportedly increased faster than the crop yields that the seed technology enables.  Monsanto confirmed that the Antitrust Division has recently asked the company for information, mostly relating to an antitrust claim leveled at Monsanto by its competitor DuPont in a patent infringement suit. click here for more »

Thomson Reuters is in the news, but probably not for a reason it’s happy about.  The European Commission has opened formal antitrust proceedings against the news and financial data giant concerning a potential infringement of EC Treaty rules on abuse of a dominant market position related to the company’s coding of its real-time market data feeds. 

Specifically, the EC will investigate whether customers or competitors are prevented from “mapping” Reuters Instrument Codes (“RICs”) to alternative identification codes of other data feed suppliers to the detriment of competition.  RICs are short alphanumerical codes that are used to retrieve information about securities from Thomson Reuters’ real-time data feeds.  A subscriber to the Thomson Reuters real-time market datafeed is not permitted to use the RICs alongside a feed from another service provider.  According to the EC, Thomson Reuters has three rivals in this area and none of them have this restriction.

EC officials identified the potential antitrust abuse when they reviewed Thomson’s merger with Reuters last year, but did not act then because it was not relevant to the merger review, which only examined how a newer larger firm would affect competition.  This suggests companies subject to merger reviews by antitrust authorities should be on guard for issues that could be of concern to those authorities, even if the issues do not rise to a level that would endanger the merger itself.

Russia’s head antitrust agency, the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (“FAS”), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) with the United States Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission to promote greater cooperation between the two governments on antitrust issues.

FAS Head Igor Artemyev, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, and Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Christine Varney signed the MOU in Washington, D.C., earlier this month.

The MOU provides that the two countries will inform each other of basic activities of the two antitrust agencies, exchange their views on options for development of bilateral cooperation in competition enforcement, and exchange materials on their areas of authority and expertise.  Chairman Leibowitz stated with regard to the agreement between the two countries, “We are delighted to enter into this antitrust Memorandum of Understanding with the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service.  It will enable us to enhance our cooperation, provide a framework for technical cooperation, and facilitate consultation on policy and enforcement matters with our counterpart in this important jurisdiction.” click here for more »

General Electric’s attempt to arrange a marriage for its 80-percent owned subsidiary NBC Universal is hitting a snag as NBC’s other parent, Vivendi, demands a greater dowry before it consents to Comcast’s proposal.

Even if the marriage of these media giants is arranged, consummation of the deal will still be dependent on review by federal agencies, which will confront such issues as combined control over media content and distribution, and “net neutrality,” the principle that Internet service providers should not block or prioritize traffic based on content.

G.E. has been negotiating for weeks with French media conglomerate Vivendi over buying its 20 percent share of NBC and then selling a majority interest in NBC to Comcast. G.E. and Comcast have reached an agreement in principle that would transfer 51 percent of NBC to Comcast.  Comcast is reported to be contributing its cable networks and between $4 billion and $6 billion in cash to the deal. click here for more »

The outlook for Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems is only partly cloudy now that federal antitrust enforcers have announced that they will not be joining their European counterparts in opposing the acquisition.

The Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice issued a statement on November 9, 2009, concluding that Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun is unlikely to be anticompetitive.  This announcement came on the heels of the European Commission’s objection to the proposed $7.4 billion transaction.

After an investigation that included gathering statements from a number of industry participants and reviewing Oracle’s and Sun’s internal business documents, the DOJ based its determination on a number of factors.

For example, the DOJ concluded that there are many open-source and proprietary database competitors who offer consumers a variety of well established and widely accepted data products, and thus the proposed acquisition would be unlikely to harm consumers.  The DOJ also determined that there exists a large community of developers and users of Sun’s open source database with significant expertise in maintaining and improving the software, and who could support a derivative version of it.

Still, Oracle must find a way to convince the European Commission that the proposed transaction is not anticompetitive.  Oracle has expressed confidence that it can do so.  The company stated that “[g]iven the lack of any credible theory or evidence of competitive harm, we are confident we will ultimately obtain unconditional clearance of the transaction.”