The reaction to the CFI’s Microsoft decision (press release here) thus far has been largely negative.

Read the full piece here.

To no one’s great surprise (other than that it took so long), the European Commission issued a Statement of Objections against Intel today.  More information as it becomes available.

For those looking for a little insight into the case, you might be interested in The FTC’s 1998 Complaint against Intel and the resulting Consent Decree (the entire case file is here).

Read the full piece here.  

My future colleague, Danny Sokol (who’ll be visiting at Missouri Law next year), is one of the authors of the fantastic Antitrust & Competition Policy Blog. Danny requested that I post the following…

Read the full piece here.

The eSapience Center for Competition Policy (eCCP) has launched its website, and it looks like a very promising resource for competition policy lawyers and economists. The site includes access to eCCP’s Competition Policy International journal (which has already attracted articles from a number of top competition policy writers; here is the link to the latest issue), case notes, op-eds, collections of works, and book reviews.

Read the full piece here.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion on standards for single firm conduct in the United States and the EU at the George Mason Antitrust Symposium, which focused on antitrust issues in the global marketplace (and I might add, was put together quite nicely by the GMU Law Review folks). The materials from many of the presentations are available at the GMU website.

Read the full piece here.

Abstract

This paper investigates a dataset that codes key features of the competition laws of 102 countries. It first compares the scope of the laws overall, and of various subcomponents such as the law governing dominance, collusive conduct, and mergers. The second question examined in this paper is whether competition law has any effect on the intensity of competition within a nation. We find, in ordinary least squares regressions, that the scope of a country’s competition law is positively associated with the perceived intensity of competition in the country’s economy. However, we find no evidence that the scope of competition law is positively associated with an objective proxy of the intensity of competition. Moreover, instrumental variables regressions, though preliminary, do not indicate that the scope of competition law affects the perceived intensity of competition.

The WSJ Law Blog reports (via this AP Report) that the French law allowing regulators to force Apple to make its iPod compatible with rival offerings went into effect Thursday. “Me too” regulatory movements are already underway in Britain, Norway, Sweden, Poland and Denmark. This, as Microsoft plans to introduce “Zune,” its entry into the media player market. First, it was Apple’s shiny packaging and exploitation of consumer irrationality that explained Apple’s success in the media player market. Now, the French law adopts a different theory: it’s iTunes.

Read the full piece here.

From Hanno Kaiser at the excellent Antitrust Review on a wide range of antitrust issues and events. Here is a brief tour through the trio and some initial reactions…

Read the full piece here.