February 27, 2008. Microsoft became the first company that the EU Competition Commission has fined (in its 50 year history) for non-compliance with an antitrust decree. The decree was based on the determination that Microsoft abused its dominant position. To remedy the violation, the decree required Microsoft to disclose interoperability information to developers of work group server operating servers (on reasonable terms) which would allow them to compete. The EU concluded that royalty rates which Microsoft imposed were unreasonable and therefore violated the antitrust decree. Below is a link to the proceedings against Microsoft in the EU. http://www.ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/antitrust/cases/microsoft/index.html
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Posted by : | On : February 25, 2008
January 7, 2008. In Kentucky Speedway, LLC v. Nat’l Ass’n of Stock Car Auto Racing, Inc., Civil Action No. 05-138 (WOB), 2008 WL 113987 (E.D.K.y. Jan. 7, 2008), the district court granted summary judgment dismissing plaintiff’s Section 1 and 2 claims. Kentucky Speedway sued because NASCAR refused to sponsor a NEXTEL race at its track. The Court considered it a “jilted distributor” case. It found that Kentucky Speedway failed to come forward with sufficient proof of relevant product market — an essential of element of both its Section 1 and 2 claims. It rejected the proposed relevant markets of a sanctioning market for the NEXTEL race and a hosting market for the same race. It granted NASCAR’s Daubert motion to exclude Kentucky Speedway’s expert because he did no study to determine the cross-elasticity of demand between NEXTEL races and other potential substitutes such as sporting events in general. Rather, Kentucky Speedway’s expert assumed only that a Bush NASCAR race event was a potential substitute.