Author: Jarod Bona Law school exams are all about issue spotting. Sure, after you spot the issue, you must describe the elements and apply them correctly. But the important skill is, in fact, issue spotting. In the real world, you can look up a claim’s elements; in fact, you should do that anyway because the law can change (see Leegin and resale price maintenance). And outside of a law-school hypothetical, it typically isn’t difficult…

photo credit: ginnerobot via photopin cc Author: Jarod Bona Antitrust injury is one of the most commonly fought battles in antitrust litigation. It is also one of the least understood antitrust concepts. No matter what your antitrust theory, it is almost certain that you must satisfy antitrust-injury requirements to win your case. So you ought to have some idea of what it is. The often-quoted language is that antitrust injury is “injury of the…

Authors: Magdalena Jakubicz and Luis Blanquez Magdalena Jakubicz is a Sr. Corporate Counsel at Cisco where she helps her business clients to achieve their goals while ensuring antitrust compliance across EMEAR and Latin America. Magdalena’s day-to-day responsibilities include the following: designing and delivering compliance programs; co-leading commercial litigations and responses to government inquiries; assisting with merger control fillings; and advising on vertical agreements and matters related to abuse of dominant position. Magdalena also provides legal…

In many instances, conduct involving the business of insurance is, indeed, exempt from antitrust liability. So why does insurance sometimes get a free pass? In 1945, Congress passed a law called The McCarran-Ferguson Act. Insurance, of course, has traditionally been regulated by the States. Territorial and jurisdictional disputes between the States and the Federal government are a grand tradition in this country. We call it Federalism. In 1945, it appears that the states won…

Author: Jarod Bona We see many antitrust issues in the distribution world—and from all business perspectives: supplier, wholesale distributor, authorized retailer, and unauthorized retailer, among others. And at the retail level, we hear from both internet and brick-and-mortar stores. The most common distribution issues that come up are resale-price-maintenance (both as an agreement and as a Colgate policy), terminated distributors/retailers, and Minimum Advertised Pricing Policies or MAP. Today, we will talk about MAP Policies…

Author: Jarod Bona Some lawyers focus on litigation. Other lawyers spend their time on transactions or mergers & acquisitions. Many lawyers offer some sort of legal counseling. And another group—often in Washington, DC or Brussels—spend their time close to the government, usually either administrative agencies or the legislature. But your friendly antitrust attorneys—the superheroes of lawyers—do all of this. That is part of what makes practicing antitrust so fun. We…

Author: Jarod Bona This website is called The Antitrust Attorney Blog, not the Appellate Attorney Blog. But I have combined an appellate practice with my antitrust practice my entire legal career and we do a lot of appellate work at Bona Law. So sometimes we address appellate, writing, and briefing issues here. I previously wrote about why you should hire an appellate lawyer. And mused about what is great legal writing. Here…