It looks like the FTC is interested in doing more than just investigating RPM (see Thom’s excellent post), as the agency just announced a series of public workshops on the question of how best to distinguish pro-competitive uses of RPM from those that raise competitive concerns.

Read the full piece here. 

Once again displaying its tenacious devotion to old Dr. Miles, the FTC is investigating whether makers of musical instruments and audio equipment have engaged in illegal resale price maintenance (RPM). Yesterday’s WSJ reported that the Commission has issued subpoenas to a number of prominent musical instrument manufacturers, including Fender, Yamaha, and Gibson, as well as to the retailer, Guitar Center, Inc. The Commission is apparently seeking to determine whether the manufacturers’ minimum advertised price (MAP) programs, which forbid retailers from advertising prices below some minimum level, amount to unreasonable vertical restraints of trade. In the post-Leegin world, even those MAP programs that amount to agreements to set retail prices are not automatically illegal. Instead, a challenger must establish their anticompetitive effect.

Read the full piece here.

Not so fast, says Will Wilkinson is this must read (and well earned) dismantling of Jacob Weisberg’s recent Slate column which has been getting a lot of attention…

Read the full piece here. 

Today’s New York Times features an op-ed by Michigan Law Professor Michael Barr and former Clinton advisor Gene Sperling that (somewhat predictably) blames our current financial mess on a lack of “common sense regulation” and exonerates the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.

Read the full piece here.

The Federal Circuit came down on the side of rule of reason analysis, and no liability, in a reverse payment case in Cipro (HT: Antitrust Review and Patently-O)…

Read the full piece here. 

Turns out the Global Competition Policy issue on Reviewing the DOJ Report on Competition and Monopoly, in addition to the articles I pointed to in this post, has added a few more responses to the Report, the FTC Response, and what the schism might mean for antitrust enforcement over the next several years. So far I’ve read and very much enjoyed the articles from Tom Barnett (DOJ), Luke Froeb and Pingping Shan, and Sean Gates (the others look good too).

Read the full piece here.

I was recently reading Dean Chemerinsky (Irvine Law) on the Roberts Court at Age 3. One of Chemerinsky’s standard takes when he talks about the Roberts Court is that the Court’s pro-business stance is one of its defining characteristics. Readers of the blog will know that I’ve been critical of Chemerinsky for his superficial antitrust commentary. For example, in this California Bar Journal piece, under the heading “Favoring Businesses over Consumers and Employees,” Chemerinsky argues that the Roberts Court antitrust decisions favored businesses over consumers by overturning Dr. Miles, “make it more difficult to sue business for antitrust violations” in Credit Suisse, and, in Twombly, made it “harder for plaintiff to get into court.”

Read the full piece here. 

The Wall Street Journal offers an update on the settlement talks with DOJ over the Google-Yahoo deal, which includes some interesting details about possible concessions to get the deal through…

Read the full piece here.

Global Competition Policy has a trio of interesting articles on the DOJ Section 2 Report, and FTC response, which I’ve blogged about here and here from Tim Brennan, William Kolasky and Mark Popofsky.  The abstract from Popofsky’s article gives a sense of the scope and importance of the issues here…

Read the full piece here.