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DOJ Gets Involved in Antitrust Case Against Symantec and Others Over Malware Testing Standards

The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division has inserted itself into a case that questions whether the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization, Inc. (AMTSO) and some of its members are creating standards in a manner that violates antitrust laws.

AMTSO says it is exempt from such per se claims by the Standards Development Organization Act of 2004 (SDOA). Symantec Corp., an AMTSO member, says the more flexible “rule of reason” applies – that it must be proven that standards actually undermine competition, which the recommended guidelines do not.

NSS Labs, Inc., is an Austin, Texas-based cybersecurity testing company which offers services including “data center intrusion prevention” and “threat detection analytics.”

In addition to Symantec, AMTSO members include widely recognized names like McAfee and Microsoft, as well as names known well in cybersecurity circles: CarbonBlack, CrowdStrike, FireEye, ICSA, and TrendMicro. NSS Labs also is a member, but says it is among a small number of testing service providers. The organization is dominated by product vendors who easily outvote the service providers like NSS, AV-Comparatives, AV-Test and SKD LABS, NSS maintains, claims disputed by the organization.

On Sept. 19, 2018, NSS Labs filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against AMTSO, CrowdStrike (since voluntarily dismissed), Symantec, and ESET, alleging the product companies used their power in AMTSO to control the design of the malware testing standards, “actively conspiring to prevent independent testing that uncovers product deficiencies to prevent consumers from finding out about them.” The industry standard requires a group boycott that restrains trade, NSS Labs argues, hurting service providers (NSS Labs v. CrowdStrike, et al., No. 5:18-cv-05711-BLF, N.D. Calif.).

The case is before U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman in Palo Alto, who has presided over a number of high-profile matters.

AMTSO moved to dismiss NSS Labs’ suit, citing its exemption from per se antitrust claims because of its status as a standards development organization (SDO). Further, it argues that the group is open to anyone and, while there are three times more vendors than testing service providers in the organization, that reflects the market itself.

On June 26, the DOJ Antitrust Division asked the court not to dismiss the case because further evidence is needed to determine whether the exemption under the SDOAA is justified.

AMTSO countered that the primary reason the case should be dismissed has “nothing to do” with the SDOAA. NSS failed to allege that AMTSO participated in any boycott, the organization says. All the group has done is “adopt a voluntary standard and foster debate about its merits, which is not illegal at all, let alone per se illegal,” the group says, adding that the Antitrust Division is asking the court to “eviscerate the SDOAA.”

Symantec first responded to the suit with a public attack on NSS Labs itself, criticizing its methodology and lack of transparency in its testing procedures, as well as the company’s technical capability and it’s “pay to play” model in conducting public tests. NSS Labs’ leadership team includes a former principal engineer in the Office of the Chief Security Architect at Cisco, a former Hewlett-Packard professional who established and managed competitive intelligence network programs, and an information systems management professional who formerly held senior management positions at Deloitte, IBM and Aon Hewitt.

On July 8, Symantec responded to the Antitrust Division’s statement of interest. It argued that the SDOAA does not provide an exemption from antitrust laws. Instead, it offers “a legislative determination that the rule of reason – not the per se rule” to standard setting activities. “That simply means the plaintiff must prove actual harm to competition, rather than relying on an inflexible rule of law,” Symantec says.

The company wrote that the government may have a point, albeit a moot one. “Symantec does not believe so, but perhaps the Division is right that there is a factual question about whether AMTSO’s membership lacks the balance the statute requires for the exclusion from per se analysis to apply,” Symantec says. Either way, the company argues, it doesn’t matter to the motions for dismissal because the per se rule does not apply.

Judge Freeman has set deadlines for disclosures, discovery, expert designations, and Daubert motions, with a trial date of Feb. 7, 2022.

Commentary

The antitrust analysis of standards setting is one of the sharpest of two-edged swords: When it works properly, it reflects a technology-driven process of reaching an industry consensus that often brings commercialization and interoperability of new technologies to market. When it is undermined, however, it reflects concerted action among competitors that agree to exclude disfavored technologies in a way that looks very much like a group boycott, a per se violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

Accordingly, the Standards Development Organization Advancement Act of 2004 (SDOAA) recognizes that, when they are functioning properly, exempting bone fide standards development organizations (SDOs) from liability for per se antitrust violations can promote the pro-competitive standard setting process. But, when do SDOs “function properly”? The answer is entirely procedural, and is embodied in the statutory definition of SDO: an organization that “incorporate[s] the attributes of openness, balance of interests, due process, an appeals process, and consensus … “

The essential claim in the complaint by NSS Labs, therefore, is that the rules and procedures followed by AMTSO do not provide sufficient procedural safeguards to ensure that the organization arrives at a pro-competitive industry consensus rather than a group boycott for the benefit of one or a few industry players dressed in the garb of standard setting.

This is a factual inquiry that cannot be countered by a legal defense that simply declares the defendant is an SDO and, therefore, immune to suit under the statute. Whether the AMTSO is an SDO under the law or not depends on how it conducts itself, the make-up of its members, and its fidelity to the procedural principles embodied in the statute. The plaintiff’s claim is that AMTSO has not followed the procedural principles required to qualify as an SDO under the Act. This is a purely factual issue and, as such, cannot be resolved on a motion to dismiss.

The DOJ should be commended for urging the court to proceed to discovery to adduce the necessary facts to distinguish between legitimate standard setting and an unlawful group boycott and it should continue to be vigilant in the face of SDOs and would-be SODs that might be tempted to use the wrong side of the standard setting sword to commit anticompetitive acts instead of the right side to produce welfare-enhancing industry consensus.

This is particularly true in vital industries like cybersecurity. Government agencies, businesses, and consumers are constantly and increasingly at risk from ever-evolving cyber threats. It is therefore imperative that the cybersecurity market remains competitive to ensure development of the most effective security products.

© MoginRubin LLP

This article was written by Jonathan Rubin and Timothy Z. LaComb of MoginRubin & edited by Tom Hagy for MoginRubin.

For more DOJ Antitrust activities, see the National Law Review Antitrust & Trade Regulation page.

Why Correctly Understanding Antitrust Risk is Crucial to Properly Addressing Brand Dilution in the E-Commerce Age

“Run a Google search for the phrase ‘minimum advertised price policy’ and you will find hundreds of policies, posted on a variety of manufacturers’ websites. Interest in minimum advertised price (‘MAP’) policies has skyrocketed in recent years.” That is what one of my colleagues wrote in a prescient article in 2013.[i] Since 2013, the interest in MAP policies has exploded. But much of the online guidance regarding MAP policies is misguided and clearly has not been crafted or vetted by antitrust counsel. Manufacturers should proceed with caution and consult with antitrust counsel before adopting a MAP policy.

What is a MAP Policy?

MAP policies impose restrictions on the price at which a product or service may be advertised without restricting the actual sales price. In the context of print advertising, MAP policies usually concern only off-site advertising, such as in flyers or brochures. They do not restrict the in-store advertising or sales price offered at the retailer’s “brick and mortar” locations. In the context of internet advertising, MAP policies often concern pricing advertised by an internet retailer on its website. But with internet advertising, the distinction between an advertised price and a sales price is often blurry and requires special attention.

What has been driving all the recent interest in MAP?

The e-commerce boom has been one key driver. Although e-commerce has been a financial boon for some by allowing products to reach broader audiences and conveniently connecting consumers to highly discounted and diversified products, other manufacturers are concerned that they are losing control over their brands and the advertising of their products. Once premium branded products might be discounted to the point of being considered cheap. As margins are squeezed, service may suffer and consumers ultimately lose out.

This phenomenon, and how to address it, has attracted massive recent attention, including from the popular press. In 2017, the Wall Street Journal published an article headlined, Brands Strike Back: Seven Strategies to Loosen Amazon’s Grip, reporting that a growing number of brands are pushing back on large online retailers by adopting MAP policies.[ii] The article reported that instituting MAP policies can be effective in decreasing online discounting. A recent Forbes article similarly recommended that manufacturers adopt MAP policies in response to the emergence of e-commerce sites.[iii]

Popular Misconceptions About MAP.

Public interest in MAP has been great for drawing attention to the usefulness of MAP policies in addressing brand dilution. But much of the popular discourse about MAP fails to account for the critical legal considerations attendant to adopting and enforcing a MAP policy, and would steer the unwary into legally risky territory. For example, a sampling of articles online—which will go unattributed—offer the following characterizations in promoting MAP policies:

A “MAP policy is an agreement between manufacturers and distributors or retailers”;
In a MAP policy, “authorized sellers agree to the policy and in return, the brand agrees to enforce their pricing”;
To prevent “margin erosion,” “manufacturers and retailers work together to set a minimum advertised price”;
MAP should be “enforced by both” the manufacturer and reseller; and
Brands should “control sellers” through “enforceable agreements.”

These suggestions to implement MAP through an “agreement” or in “cooperation” with resellers, and to use MAP to enforce product pricing, may have intuitive appeal. And in fact, several MAP templates available online are styled as “agreements” between the manufacturer and reseller. But be warned—these suggestions, if carried out, could pose significant antitrust risk that could subject companies to serious and expensive liability. The next section explains why.

Quick Antitrust Legal Guide to MAP.

When most people think of illegal antitrust conspiracies, they think of agreements among competitors to fix prices or restrict competition, which are per se illegal. But in general, manufacturers also may not require their resellers—either distributors or retailers—to resell at (or above) a set price. This is known as minimum resale price maintenance (“RPM”) and it is also per seillegal under antitrust laws in several states.

Although RPM may be per se illegal under certain state laws, MAP policies are generally analyzed under a more lenient legal framework called the “rule of reason.” But a MAP policy must be crafted with care to avoid being treated as RPM. For example, agreements with resellers concerning the minimum advertised price may be viewed, depending on the circumstances, as actually having the effect of setting the minimum sales price, converting the MAP policy into RPM. A MAP policy also must be adopted free from any agreement with a manufacturer’s horizontal competitors, which could be found to be an unlawful horizontal conspiracy. In one prominent example, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) brought an enforcement action against five major competing compact disk (“CD”) distributors challenging their MAP policies as violating federal antitrust laws.[iv] All five major CD distributors had adopted MAP policies around the same time, allegedly at the urging of retailers, and the policies each prohibited all advertising below a certain price, including in-store advertising. The FTC viewed the policies under those circumstances as horizontal agreements among the distributors, and thus per se illegal.

Practical Antitrust Pointers for MAP.

Several guiding principles can help minimize antitrust risk in adopting a MAP policy:

Advertising Only. A retailer should remain free to sell a product at any price, so that the restriction on advertising is deemed to be a non-price restraint. In the context of online sales, adhering to this principle can require special care, as some might try to argue that there is little distinction between an advertised price and a sales price. MAP policies that concern internet advertising thus often include provisions that allow internet retailers to communicate an actual sales price in a different manner—such as “Call for Pricing” or “Add to Cart to See Price.”
No Agreement. A MAP policy should be drafted as a unilateral policy—i.e., a policy that the manufacturer creates on its own (in consultation with antitrust counsel), without input from or agreement with its own competitors or with its downstream resellers. The policy should expressly state that it is a unilateral policy that does not constitute an agreement.
Broad Application. Policies that apply to all off-site advertising, no matter the form, are more likely to be upheld than policies that are specifically directed at internet retailers.
Clarity. A MAP policy should be user-friendly and easy to understand. One best practice is to include a Frequently Asked Questions guide to clarify how the policy works.

Antitrust risk must be kept in mind not just when a MAP policy is created, but throughout its implementation and enforcement. The manner in which a MAP policy is enforced could risk converting the unilateral policy into conduct that could be viewed as a tacit agreement, even if no written agreement is ever signed. For example, enlisting or “working with” resellers to enforce the policy, as suggested by articles online, could be viewed as evidence that a manufacturer is coordinating with resellers as part of an overall agreement. Working with competitors to coordinate strategies for MAP enforcement would also pose significant legal risk. For that reason, manufacturers that are adopting MAP policies should resist communications with resellers or competitors about MAP and continue to work with antitrust counsel through implementation and enforcement.

To be sure, some may believe that coordination, for example, between manufacturers and retailers, is helpful in stamping out e-commerce discounting. But even if such coordination between manufacturers and retailers could be effective in addressing such discounting, it carries significant legal risks. And potentially risky agreements with resellers are not a manufacturer’s only option in addressing how its products are advertised in e-commerce. Other tools are also available and can be adopted in conjunction with MAP and other policies. As just one example, a unilateral distribution policy, in which a manufacturer unilaterally suspends resellers that sell through unauthorized e-commerce sites, can be a powerful complement to a MAP policy. It also may present a more direct way to address the e-commerce channels through which goods are (or are not) sold. Because such policies do not involve prices, if appropriately created and implemented, U.S. courts are likely to also assess them under the lenient “rule of reason.” It is therefore unsurprising that such policies are gaining in popularity. One recent study surveying over 1,000 European retailers found that policies precluding or limiting e-commerce sales are widely in place with approximately 18% of respondents reporting that manufacturers limit their ability to sell through online marketplaces or platforms and 11% reporting that manufacturers restrict their online sales to their own website.[v]

Ultimately, addressing brand dilution is critical in the e-commerce age. It is also highly fact specific and typically requires custom solutions tailored to a company’s commercial and legal objectives. Adopting an “off the rack” MAP policy and simply hoping for the best is unwise and could lead to expensive litigation or, worse yet, liability and costly penalties. But antitrust lawyers are here to help companies navigate the legal landscape to come up with commonsense solutions that work while minimizing legal risk.

[i] Erika L. Amarante, A Roadmap to Minimum Advertised Price Policies, 16 The Franchise Lawyer 4 (2013), https://www.wiggin.com/erika-l-amarante/publications/a-roadmap-to-minimum-advertised-price-policies/.

[ii] Ruth Simon, Brands Strike Back: Seven Strategies to Loosen Amazon’s Grip, Wall St. J., (Aug. 7, 2017), https://www.wsj.com/articles/brands-strike-back-seven-strategies-to-loosen-amazons-grip-1502103602.

[iii] Danae Vara Borrell, Why Manufacturers Can’t Afford to Ignore Minimum Advertised Price Policies, Forbes Tech. Council (Oct. 17, 2018), https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/10/17/why-manufacturers-cant-afford-to-ignore-minimum-advertised-price-policies/#167f8d5417ec.

[iv] See In re Sony Entertainment, Inc., No. C-3971, 2000 WL 1257796 (F.T.C. Aug. 30, 2000).

[v] See European Commission, Final Report on the Ecommerce Sector Inquiry, staff working document paragraph 461, http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/sector_inquiry_swd_en.pdf.

Article by Benjamin H. Diessel and Timothy Cowan of Wiggin and Dana LLP.

More more on antitrust matters see the National Law Review Antitrust & Trade Regulation page.

Antitrust Law Post Antonin Scalia

gavel scales of justice blue With the untimely passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, perhaps the best known and most controversial Justice on the Court, commentators, including this one, have been called upon to assess his legacy – both immediate and long term – in various areas of the law.

Justice Scalia was not known primarily as an antitrust judge and scholar. Indeed, in his confirmation hearing for the Court, he joked about what he saw as the incoherent nature of much of antitrust analysis. What he was best known for, of course, is his method of analysis of statutes and the Constitution: a literal textualism with respect to statutes and a reliance on “originalism” with respect to the Constitution.

Probably his most influential antitrust opinion was the 2004 decision in Verizon Communications Inc. v. Law Offices of Curtis V. Trinko LLP which limited antitrust plaintiffs’ ability to hold a company with monopoly power liable for failing to cooperate with rivals.

Taking a literalist view of the Sherman Act, Justice Scalia wrote that there was a good reason why Section 2 claims required a showing of anti-competitive conduct, not just a monopoly.

The mere possession of monopoly power, and the concomitant charging of monopoly prices, is not only not unlawful; it is an important element of the free-market system,” he wrote. “The opportunity to charge monopoly prices — at least for a short period — is what attracts ‘business acumen’ in the first place; it induces risk-taking that produces innovation and economic growth.

Thus, Justice Scalia fashioned a majority in holding that the competitive conduct of a monopolist that had earned its hegemony was not inherently suspect. This has come to be a dominant view generally in the antitrust field, but critics have argued that the decision entrenches power and judicial liberals who might succeed Justice Scalia could take a more restrictive, less literal view of the law.

In 1991, Justice Scalia led a majority in Columbia v. Omni Outdoor Advertising Inc., a case in which a competitor had claimed that an advertising rival and a municipality had conspired in passing an ordinance favoring the incumbent. In ruling against the plaintiff, Justice Scalia wrote that there was no “conspiracy exception” to Parker v. Brown, the 1943 Supreme Court case that established antitrust immunity for anti-competitive restraints imposed by state governments. On the other hand, in the recent North Carolina Dentists litigation with the FTC, Justice Scalia joined a majority that held the state action exemption did not apply to certain guild behavior where there was no active supervision by the state – again, a literalist approach.

Justice Scalia was influential in limiting class actions, enforcing arbitration agreements and requiring strict rules of pleading plausible causes of action. Cases like the antitrust actions in AT&T v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors, backing enforcement of arbitration agreements that blocked class treatment of claims, and the now often-cited cases of Twombley and Iqbal with respect to pleading currently rule the entry gate for large-case litigation, particularly antitrust.

For all of his conservative rulings, Justice Scalia was not a results-oriented judge determined to put antitrust plaintiffs in their place, I think that he would have argued that he was strictly neutral on the merits and didn’t care whether business prevailed or whether the class action plaintiffs prevailed. Whether, the conservative majority that adopted his methods will continue to hold, or whether some of these methods will be superseded by a more-elastic interpretive mode of judging will be at the forefront of the confirmation hearing of the next Justice.

Article By Stuart M. Gerson of Epstein Becker & Green, P.C.

Ninth Circuit Rules NCAA Violates Antitrust Law-Strikes Down Proposed Remedy

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in San Francisco, affirmed in part and reversed in part Judge Claudia Wilken’s August 2014 district court decision that NCAA rules restricting payment to athletes violate antitrust laws.

The Ninth Circuit agreed with Judge Wilken’s conclusion that NCAA rules restricting payment to athletes violated antitrust laws and authorized NCAA schools to provide athletic scholarships that cover the full cost of attendance. However, the Ninth Circuit rejected a key component of Judge Wilken’s decision which authorized the payment of $5,000 per year in deferred compensation for the use of individual athletes’ names, images and likenesses.

The opinion, written on behalf of the panel by Judge Jay Bybee, stated,

“NCAA is not above the antitrust laws, and courts cannot and must not shy away from requiring the NCAA to play by the Sherman Act’s rules….In this case, the NCAA’s rules have been more restrictive than necessary to maintain its tradition of amateurism in support of the college sports market.”

A more detailed analysis of the decision and its potential impact will be posted shortly.

Article By Gregg E. Clifton & Benjamin A. Tulis of Jackson Lewis P.C.

March (Appellate) Madness re: O'Bannon NCAA Antitrust Case

It has been a few months since we updated on the O’Bannon antitrustcase, where federal judge Claudia Wilken ruled last summer that theNCAA’s amateurism rules violated federal antitrust laws. But this week, as the rest of the country filled out their brackets and geared up for the start of the NCAA tournament, the NCAA was getting ready for another battle – in the Ninth Circuit. On Tuesday, the appeals court heard oral argument from both the NCAA and plaintiffs’ counsel, as the parties debated the lower court’s decision, which allowed limited compensation for the use of athletes’ name, image, and likenesses.

Central to the parties’ argument was the interpretation of NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, a 1984 case regarding football television rights. While the NCAA lost that case, one statement in that case has become central to the NCAA’s current “amateurism” defense: “To preserve the character and quality of the ‘product,’ athletes must not be paid.” In Tuesday’s arguments, some of the judges seemed skeptical of the NCAA’s shifting definition of “pay,” they were also concerned about opening the door to “pay for play.”

We can expect a ruling in the upcoming months, though this is unlikely to be the final appeal in the case.

ARTICLE BY

Amanda Norris Ames

Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, PLLC

March (Appellate) Madness re: O’Bannon NCAA Antitrust Case

We can expect a ruling in the upcoming months, though this is unlikely to be the final appeal in the case.

ARTICLE BY

Amanda Norris Ames

Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, PLLC

The Unhappy Intersection of Hospital Mergers and Antitrust Laws

The rapidly-evolving field of health care has been moving lately towards a single-minded goal – coordination of patient care in the name of efficiency and efficacy. Hospital systems are more and more often merging with other medical practices to better achieve the standards and goals of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”). TheNinth Circuit Court of Appeals, however, recently provided a stark reminder that the ACA isn’t the only law hospitals need to consider compliance with in these mergers.

Saltzer Medical Group in Nampa, Idaho, had been seeking to make a change from fee-for-service to risk-based reimbursement and approached St. Luke’s Health System in Boise in 2012about a formal partnership. They entered into a five-year professional service agreement that contained language about wanting to move away from fee-for-service reimbursement but without any clear language on making that change. Saltzer received a $9 million payment on the deal. Other hospital systems in the area, the FTC, and the Idaho Attorney General all filed suit to enjoin the merger.

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s holding that St. Luke’s violated state and federal antitrust laws when acquiring Saltzer. St. Luke’s argued that acquisition of the other provider would improve patient outcomes and care in the community of Nampa, Idaho, where Saltzer operates, but both courts agreed that the anticompetitive concerns surrounding the merger outweighed the benefits to quality care.

This case and other similar cases brought by the FTC provide a bleak outlook for health care providers looking to merge with other entities to provide care and efficiency under the aims of the ACA. While the court ultimately found that St. Luke’s aims were beneficial and not anticompetitive in and of themselves, antitrust laws only truly take the effect on competition into account, and courts are not ready to place quality of care under the ACA on equal footing.

ARTICLE BY

Molly Nicol Lewis

McBrayer, McGinnis, Leslie and Kirkland, PLLC

Congress Begins With Renewed Efforts to Repeal Insurer’s Antitrust Exemption

Early into the 114^th Congress, multiple bills have already been introduced that would repeal the insurance industry’s limited antitrust exemption granted by the McCarran-Ferguson Act (15 USC 1011 et seq.).

On January 6, Representative John Conyers (D-Mich.) introduced the “Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act of 2015,” (H.R. 99). The legislation would amend the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which currently provides the insurance industry with an exemption from the federal antitrust laws for conduct that is “the business of insurance,” is “subject to state regulation,” and does not constitute “an act of boycott, coercion or intimidation,” (15 USC 1013), by removing the exemption for health insurers and medical malpractice insurers. Notably, the bill would not eliminate the exemption with respect to other lines of insurance, and is similar to McCarran repeal bills that Representative Conyers has introduced in prior sessions of Congress. Representative Conyers has previously stated that his bill would “end the mistake Congress made in 1945 when it added an antitrust exemption for insurance companies.”

Subsequently, on January 22, Representative Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who was a practicing dentist for many years, introduced similar McCarran repeal legislation, entitled the “Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act of 2015” (H.R. 494). Representative Gosar’s bill would only eliminate the exemption as to health insurers. In introducing his legislation, Representative Gosar stated that “Since the passage of Obamacare, the health insurance market has expanded into one of the least transparent and most anti-competitive industries in the United States,” and that there is “no reason in law, policy or logic for the insurance industry to have a special exemption” from the antitrust laws.

Both H.R. 99 and H.R. 494 have been referred to the House Judiciary Committee for further action. Whether these bills will gain traction this Congress remains to be seen, but the fact that the bill has supporters on both sides of the aisle certainly increases the chances that the legislation will, at a minimum, be considered by the House Judiciary Committee (which failed to take up similar legislation in the 113^th Congress).

ARTICLE BY

James M. Burns

Dickinson Wright PLLC

U.S. Sentencing Commission Weighing Recommendation to Increase Criminal Antitrust Penalties

In June, the United States Sentencing Commission, which is appointed by the President to make recommendations to Congress on the criminal penalties for the violation of federal law, issued a request for comments regarding whether the guidelines for calculating antitrust fines should be modified. Currently, corporate fines for cartel price fixing are calculated on a sliding scale, tied to the amount of the “overcharge” imposed by the violators, with the standard maximum fine under the Guidelines for a corporation capped at $100 million and, for an individual, capped at $1 million. The deadline for such comments was July 29, and the views expressed on the issue varied considerably.

Contending that the current Guidelines do not provide an adequate deterrent to antitrust violations, the American Antitrust Institute urged the Commission to recommend an increase in the fines for cartel behavior. The AAI stated that the presumption in the Guidelines that antitrust cartels, on average, “overcharge” consumers for goods by 10% is greatly understated, and thus should be corrected to reflect more accurate levels. Pointing to economic studies and cartel verdicts, the AAI suggests that the median cartel “overcharge” is actually in excess of 20%, and therefore the presumption should be modified in the Guidelines. If adopted, the AAI’s proposal would double the recommended fines under the Guidelines for antitrust violations.

Perhaps surprisingly, the DOJ responded to the Commission’s Notice by stating that it believes that the current fines are sufficient, and that no increase in antitrust fines is warranted at this time. The DOJ indicated that the 10% overcharge presumption provides a “predictable, uniform methodology” for the calculation of fines in most cases, and noted that the Guidelines already permit the DOJ to exceed the fine levels calculated using the 10% overcharge presumption in some circumstances. Specifically, the DOJ noted that the alternative sentencing provisions of 18 USC 3571 already permit it to sidestep the standard guidelines and seek double the gain or loss from the violation where appropriate. Notably, the DOJ utilized this provision in seeking a $1 billion fine from AU Optronics in a 2012 action, although the court declined the request, characterizing it as “excessive”. The court did, however, impose a $500 million fine, an amount well in excess of the cap under the standard antitrust fine guidelines.

Finally, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Douglas Ginsburg and FTC Commissioner Joshua Wright offered a completely different view on the issue in comments that they submitted to the Sentencing Commission. Suggesting that fines imposed on corporations seem to have little deterrent effect, regardless of amount, they encouraged the Commission to instead recommend an increase in the individual criminal penalty provisions for antitrust violations. Notably, they encouraged the Commission not only to consider recommending an increase in the fines to which an individual might be subjected (currently capped at $1 million), but also to recommend an increase in the prescribed range of jail sentences for such conduct (which currently permit for imprisonment of up to 10 years).

The Commission will now weigh these comments and ultimately submit its recommendations to Congress by next May. If any changes are adopted by Congress, they would likely go into effect later next year. Stay tuned.

ARTICLE BY

James M. Burns

Dickinson Wright PLLC

Sizing Up the Competition: Antitrust Enforcement and the Bazaarvoice Ruling

High-profile or highly profitable firms are no longer the sole targets of post-merger divestitures by antitrust enforcers. Today, firms that have little or no revenues, including some that operate in emergent industries with little or negative profits, also find themselves subject to merger inquiries, as demonstrated by the recent merger review of Bazaarvoice’s 2012 non-reportable $160 million acquisition of PowerReviews.

Bazaarvoice merger antitrust

These competing firms were both operating at a loss in the relatively small Ratings and Review (R&R) market. Yet, the nature of competition in the industry and the industry’s potential importance to adjacent industries – combined with statements by the acquirer’s executives prior to the transaction – attracted the scrutiny of antitrust enforcers. Ultimately, Bazaarvoice agreed to divest all of its PowerReviews assets, including employees and client base, to a small competitor, Viewpoints – which had initially entered R&R space by building a solution for Sears – for $30 million.

This article considers the economic arguments and evidence used by the court to reach its decision in United States v. Bazaarvoice.

Background

R&R platforms offer an online interface for customer reviews of different products, which can help to drive sales, increase product visibility, and offer valuable information on customers to brands and retailers, allowing brands to respond to customer concerns in real time. Leading platforms offer clients the following services: confirmation of the authenticity of customer reviews; moderation of reviews (e.g., removing offensive language); syndication that combines reviews from multiple retailers to increase the visibility of a product; data on retailers and social media analytics to support marketing; and search engine optimization to drive traffic. Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews offered clients all of these services, but Bazaarvoice generally provided more customizable features at higher price points to larger clients. Bazaarvoice offered human moderation of customer reviews, for example, while PowerReviews offered only automated monitoring.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) applied competitive analysis that ignored more traditional focuses on supracompetitive pricing, high margins, and immediate harm to consumers.

In 2012, Bazaarvoice had 800 employees and revenue of $106.1 million; in 2011, the privately held PowerReviews employed just 80 people and reportedly had revenue of $11.5 million. Although PowerReviews did not publicly report its profitability, according to Bazaarvoice executives, the smaller firm was operating at a loss. Similarly, Bazaarvoice itself reported consistently negative operating margins in 2011–2013 that were no higher than -23%.

At the time of the court ruling (January 2014), actual competition from other platforms in the R&R market was marginal, composed primarily of a handful of start-ups with inferior products or of larger firms that offered complementary products. Direct competitors like Pluck, Gigya, Practical Data, Rating-system.com, and European Reevoo were tiny, with few customers and weak services. More established firms that might have acted as potential competitors, such as Google, Facebook, Oracle, and Salesforce, were more interested in partnering with Bazaarvoice than in competing in the R&R market. Meanwhile, Amazon accounted for 28% of e-commerce revenue and maintained (and still does, as of August 2014) its own R&R platform, which was not available to competing retailers.

Competitive arguments and evidence

In its review of the transaction, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) applied competitive analysis that ignored more traditional focuses on supracompetitive pricing, high margins, and immediate harm to consumers. The analysis focused instead on the nature of competition in the R&R industry, including barriers to entry and the anticompetitive potential for long-run harm to consumers as detailed in the assessments of Bazaarvoice senior staff.

Low margins: The parties were losing money. Their profits were a far cry from the supracompetitive profits often associated with companies targeted by antitrust litigation. In previous antitrust cases against Microsoft, for example, the company’s margins on Windows and MS Office had played a significant role at trial. Similarly, the potential for enhanced market power and exceptional margins contributed to the DOJ decision to prevent Microsoft from acquiring Intuit in 1994–1995.

Barriers to entry: Bazaarvoice’s extensive syndication network, in particular, became a major component of the case. The DOJ argued that it would be extremely difficult for competitors to develop a comparable syndication network of retailers and brands, allowing Bazaarvoice to leverage anticompetitive economies of scale across many important clients. These advantages, combined with the difficulty of switching from one R&R platform to another – as demonstrated by the reluctance of PowerReviews customers to switch to the Bazaarvoice platform – would effectively block new entrants from the market. While the DOJ’s argument was much less convincing with respect to other barriers to entry, such as the company’s technology and reputation, clearly antitrust enforcers had seized on important elements of the relationship between Bazaarvoice’s value proposition and the growth of the R&R market.

Bad documents: These potential anticompetitive implications were explicitly referenced in Bazaarvoice’s own internal documents, which became instrumental in court. The firm’s current CEO remarked that there were “literally, no other competitors” beyond PowerReviews, and the former CEO wrote that after the proposed acquisition of PowerReviews, Bazaarvoice would have “[n]o meaningful direct competitor.” Bazaarvoice senior executives openly acknowledged that syndication networks created high barriers to entry in the R&R industry and clearly described that the elimination of Bazaarvoice’s “primary competitor” would provide “relief from price erosion.” The DOJ seized on these documents, arguing that the merger would increase prices and eliminate the “substantial price discounts” that retailers and manufacturers received as a result of competition between Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews.

Court’s opinion

In this case, the court noted these apparent competitive weaknesses and remained on the lookout for changes in the R&R market. In fact, in the 18 months from the time of the acquisition on June 12, 2012, until the case’s ultimate outcome on January 8, 2014, the only post-merger evidence that was considered dispositive by the court was
the absence of serious entry to the market. The court explicitly rejected the use of pricing data, suggesting that it could be manipulated. The same pricing data that regulators might have expected to rise above competitive levels – and that therefore could have created space for new entrants in the R&R market at lower price points – was viewed as suspect. The DOJ case was structured instead around the absence of a credible entry threat in the R&R space, despite Bazaarvoice’s annual margins of around -30%.

Discussion

The court’s focus on the entry threat and its dismissal of pricing policies is curious, because the two issues are highly related. In an industry characterized by prices so low that the market leader is highly unprofitable, new firms have no incentive to enter. To become profitable, Bazaarvoice would have had to double its prices, and yet no evidence presented in the case demonstrated that entry would be impossible at that much higher price level. Surprisingly, the court did not connect these two issues in a meaningful way.

For Bazaarvoice, the challenge was less about responding to customer concerns or even to actual prices than it was about addressing the incendiary internal paper trail left by the company’s senior executives. In fact, as the testifying expert for Bazaarvoice/PowerReviews, Dr. Ramsey Shehadeh, pointed out, customers expressed no reservations about the merger, and Bazaarvoice had not raised prices. Ultimately, the court discounted Bazaarvoice’s arguments related to the absence of actual anticompetitive effects, noting that the firms could moderate their behavior while under antitrust scrutiny and focused instead on the firm’s own internal documents, which had detailed a plan to block competitive pressure. Bazaarvoice found itself fighting its own internal assessment of the competitive effects of the proposed merger, in addition to the DOJ’s economic arguments. The internal documents and emails were far more difficult to explain away than the economic circumstances, resulting in a full divestiture.

ARTICLE BY

Rebecca Kirk Fair

Analysis Group, Inc.

Category: Antitrust