ANTITRUST AND COMPETITION IN THE US TECH SECTOR
R&C: Could you provide an overview of the key antitrust trends and developments impacting the US tech sector in recent times?
Breed: The tech sector has attracted an intense amount of antitrust scrutiny over the past several years. Commentators and antitrust agencies have focused both on unilateral conduct by some of the large players in the tech space and on antitrust investigations of tech mergers, particularly those involving large platform companies. This scrutiny comes not only from the federal US antitrust agencies, the Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust division and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), but also from various US state attorneys general and Congress. The current presidential campaign featured several Democratic candidates who prominently called for the breakup of ‘Big Tech’ companies, although the current COVID-19 crisis has muted some of the campaign rhetoric on the topic.
R&C: What competition issues in the technology sector are typically being raised by consumers, businesses and entrepreneurs?
Breed: The most prominent merger-related tech sector issue recently has been acquisitions of nascent competitors by large, established players. Another hot topic in the merger context has been vertical merger enforcement. Both the DOJ and the FTC are currently considering new vertical merger guidelines following the DOJ’s loss in its challenge to the AT&T/Time Warner vertical transaction. In the area of unilateral conduct, much of the focus has been on the large tech platforms that have unique access to enormous amounts of data and compete with companies operating on the platform and companies that have used their large patent portfolios and market presence to undermine competition, such as Qualcomm.
Jul-Sep 2020 Issue
Hogan Lovells