Antitrust Litigation

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Antitrust litigation covering monopolization, price-fixing, and merger challenges, with real footing at the IP and antitrust intersection where patent licensing, standards, and refusals to deal collide with competition law.

Antitrust cases combine high exposure with dense economic analysis, and they often hinge on conduct that looked perfectly ordinary inside your business. We represent companies in civil antitrust disputes and government enforcement, from defending monopolization and price-fixing claims to litigating the competition issues that surface around mergers, distribution, and licensing.

Monopolization And Conduct Claims

Section 2 and the harder edges of Section 1 turn on how your conduct affected competition, not just a rival. We defend against monopolization and attempted-monopolization allegations, tying and bundling claims, exclusive dealing, and refusal-to-deal theories, building the record on market definition, business justification, and procompetitive effects that separates aggressive competition from an antitrust violation.

Price-Fixing And Cartel Defense

Allegations of price-fixing, bid-rigging, and market allocation carry the steepest stakes in antitrust, including treble damages and parallel criminal exposure. We defend against horizontal conspiracy claims by attacking the evidence of agreement, explaining lawful parallel conduct and information exchange, and coordinating civil defense with any government investigation so positions stay consistent across fronts.

IP And Antitrust Intersection

Some of the thorniest antitrust questions live inside intellectual property: standard-essential patents and FRAND commitments, patent pools, reverse-payment settlements, and claims that licensing or refusals to license harm competition. Because our attorneys work in both IP and technology, we litigate these disputes without treating the patent law and the competition law as separate worlds, which is exactly where these cases are decided.

Frequently asked questions

The Sherman Act is the big one: it bans agreements that restrain trade and prohibits monopolization. The Clayton Act covers mergers, exclusive dealing, and tying arrangements, and the FTC Act prohibits unfair methods of competition. On top of those, most states have their own antitrust laws that add another layer of enforcement.

Some conduct, like price-fixing among competitors, is per se illegal, meaning it's automatically unlawful and the court won't hear arguments that it actually helped competition. Other conduct, like many vertical restraints, gets the rule of reason, where the court weighs the pro-competitive benefits against the anti-competitive harm. Which category your conduct falls into largely determines how the case is defended and how much exposure you face.

A private plaintiff can recover treble damages, meaning three times their actual damages, plus attorneys' fees, and can also seek an injunction. That automatic tripling is what makes antitrust claims so high-stakes and is a big reason private plaintiffs bring them. For a defendant, it means a modest actual loss can turn into a very large judgment.

The DOJ and FTC investigate using civil investigative demands for documents and testimony, grand jury subpoenas in criminal matters, and voluntary interviews. An investigation can lead to a civil enforcement action, criminal prosecution for hard-core conduct like cartels, or simply close with no action. How you respond early on can shape which of those outcomes you're facing.

Bring in experienced antitrust counsel right away and put a document hold in place so nothing relevant gets deleted. From there, figure out the scope and focus of the investigation, sort out privilege issues, and build a response plan. Decisions about cooperation and any leniency application can carry real consequences, so they need to be assessed early rather than later.

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