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Rush was dropped from the group of investors looking to purchase the St. Louis Rams. They said he became "a complication."

Rush Limbaugh won't be buying a piece of the St. Louis Rams after all. With criticism mounting, Dave Checketts, the sports businessman leading a group vying for the National Football League franchise, dumped the controversial conservative talk show host just days after Mr. Limbaugh disclosed his intent to buy a minority interest in the team.

"My co-worker, Tim, explained that our company, a major software vendor, is seeing its mainframe workforce rapidly approaching the age of retirement. Tim said IBM and most other firms whose businesses depend on mainframes are also dealing with this industry-wide problem. "Since the 1980’s, PC’s and UNIX machines were supposed to have taken over the computing world, relegating mainframes to the scrap heap alongside rotary-dial telephones, suitcase-size boom boxes, and Plymouth Reliants. Indeed, most mainframes from that era have been consigned to the scrap heap – only to be replaced by bigger and faster mainframes. "Today the number of mainframes...

If government wants to offer health care, they need to get out of the regulatory business. Or be a regulator, not a health care provider. Most people would call this request a mater of anti trust. Waxman thinks its OK to get this data because, hmmmmm...... well I don't know why.

Wireless Market, Generic Drugs Reviewed as Justice Department Steps Up Enforcement The Department of Justice has begun looking into whether large U.S. telecommunications companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. are abusing the market power they have amassed in recent years, according to people familiar with the matter. The review, while in its early stages, is an indication of the Obama administration's aggressive stance on antitrust enforcement. The Justice Department's antitrust chief, Christine Varney, has said she wants to reassert the government's role in policing monopolistic and anticompetitive practices by powerful companies.

Anti-trust or Anti-trustworthy? by: Mytheos Holt, June 19, 2009 Last month, assistant Attorney General Christine Varney announced plans by the Obama administration to reinvigorate antitrust policy as a step to solve “cases where monopolists try to use their dominance in the marketplace to stifle competition and harm consumers," a plan legal critics are warning is on a “collision course” with recent precedent set by the Supreme Court, and by extension, with the constitutional rule of law itself. For his part, DC Appellate Court Justice Douglas Ginsburg argues that recent Supreme Court decisions show a “more informed approach to antitrust cases”—one...

FedEx Express is learning what could be the Democrats' economic motto -- "Never Let Success Go Unpunished." Led by Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minnesota), the House on May 21 passed legislation that contains a hidden provision -- a mere 230 words -- that would hobble FedEx Express by completely changing the labor laws under which the company operates. Unless the Senate removes the language from the bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration, a mere dozen or so workers in just one city could hamstring much of the nation's overnight delivery service. Americans take for granted that things can "absolutely, positively ......

Executives from many of America's leading newspaper companies and the head of the Associated Press met quietly in Chicago on Thursday to discuss ways to increase revenues from their online operations -- presumably by charging visitors to their websites -- as well as how to recapture some share of their catastrophically declining classified ad business. The meeting, whose participants included an antitrust lawyer to make sure the conversation didn't stray into impermissible collusion or price-fixing, was conducted under the auspices of the Newspaper Assn. of America, and its agenda was titled "Models to Lawfully Monetize Content." These guys may be...

The newspaper world has temporarily diverted its gaze from its collective navel to Rosemont, Ill. That's where, reports James Warren in the Atlantic, top executives from major papers have gathered to plot the future of their business. Machers from, among others, the New York Times, Gannett, E.W. Scripps, Advance Publications, McClatchy, Hearst Newspapers, MediaNews Group, the Associated Press, Philadelphia Media Holdings, Lee Enterprises, and Freedom Communication Inc. were scheduled to gather for a "discreet" "discussion about content models," including the possibility of charging for Web content. This comes barely a month after a similar meeting in San Diego, where CEOs...

Here's a story the newspaper industry's upper echelon apparently kept from its anxious newsrooms: A discreet Thursday meeting in Chicago about their future. "Models to Monetize Content" is the subject of a gathering at a hotel which is actually located in drab and sterile suburban Rosemont, Illinois; slabs of concrete, exhibition halls and mostly chain restaurants, whose prime reason for being is O'Hare International Airport. It's perfect for quickie, in-and-out conclaves. There's no mention on its website but the Newspaper Association of America, the industry trade group, has assembled top executives of the New York Times, Gannett, E. W. Scripps,...

President Obama’s campaign to cut health costs by $2 trillion over the next decade, announced with fanfare two weeks ago, may have hit another snag: the nation’s antitrust laws. Antitrust lawyers say doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and drug makers will be running huge legal risks if they get together and agree on a strategy to hold down prices and reduce the growth of health spending. Robert F. Leibenluft, a former official at the Federal Trade Commission, said, “Any agreement among competitors with regard to prices or price increases — even if they set a maximum — would raise legal concerns.”...

Silicon Valley companies are bracing for a tough new phase of antitrust scrutiny, responding to signs of heavier enforcement by the Obama administration and continued pressure from abroad. A stricter stance against companies that dominate their sectors is likely to test government-relations strategies that technology giants adopted during the Bush administration. Google Inc., one of the most prominent companies under the watch of antitrust regulators, says its lobbyists and executives since March have met with about 40 groups, including lawmakers, regulators and advertising agencies, to argue that its business practices don't reduce competition. A Google spokesman said the effort is...

For decades, the nation’s biggest antitrust cases have centered on technology companies. And they have all been efforts by the government to deal with powerful companies with far-reaching influence, like AT&T, the telephone monopoly; I.B.M., the mainframe computer giant; and Microsoft, the powerhouse of personal computer software. Last week, the Obama administration declared a sharp break with the Bush years, vowing to toughen antitrust enforcement, especially for dominant companies. The approach is closer to that of the European Union, where regulators last week fined Intel $1.45 billion for abusing its power in the chip market. In this new climate, the...

The world is returning to the 1970s on most economic policies, so why not antitrust too? Judging by events this week, antitrust enforcement in the U.S. and Europe is in for a major comeback, whether or not consumers benefit. Yesterday in Brussels, the European Commission imposed a record antitrust fine of $1.45 billion on Intel for the heinous crime of discounting computer chips in its fierce and long-running competition with AMD. Meanwhile on Monday, President Obama's new antitrust chief, Christine Varney, issued a radical revision of the Department of Justice's own antitrust enforcement standards. Ms. Varney's ambition seems to be...

Most likely, we grant you, it was coincidence. But we couldn’t help notice the timing: Two days after the DOJ’s new antitrust head, Christine Varney, publicly repudiates her predecessors by pledging to ramp up enforcement on so-called “single-firm” monopolistic behavior, the European Union takes a sledgehammer to Intel Corp., fining it $1.45 billion for alleged monopolistic activity. The fine is the largest ever assessed for monopoly abuse. [snip] The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Intel broke EU rules by using the threat of withdrawing rebates it offered to large computer manufacturers, its customers, to pressure to them to...

The verdict is in and it's huge. As expected, the EU is fining Intel a record €1.06 billion or $1.45 billion (Billion!) dollars due to violations of antitrust rules in Europe. The record fine surpasses that of the €497 million fine originally levied against Microsoft. The EU ruled that Intel illegally used hidden rebates to squeeze rivals out of the marketplace for CPUs. In a statement issued by European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, the EC said,

The Obama administration plans tougher antitrust enforcement that could affect pending antimonopoly court cases as well as merger plans involving sectors from banks and dairy farms to railroads and technology. The Justice Department on Monday signaled a sharp turn from the Bush administration's more forgiving approach, arguing the economic crisis called for more antitrust enforcement. Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney formally withdrew Bush-era guidance that has helped defendants in antimonopoly suits. She also suggested the Justice Department would broaden its scrutiny of mergers to include deals in which companies acquire suppliers as well as competitors. A tougher approach by the...

Obama Going After Big Companies That Improperly Dominate Markets Justice Department Plans New Antitrust Effort Monday, May 11, 2009 By Devlin Barrett, Associated Press Washington (AP) - SNIPPET: "Varney laid out the new policy in a speech to the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank."

President Obama’s top antitrust official this week plans to restore an aggressive enforcement policy against corporations that use their market dominance to elbow out competitors or to keep them from gaining market share. The new enforcement policy would reverse the Bush administration’s approach, which strongly favored defendants against antitrust claims. It would restore a policy that led to the landmark antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft and Intel in the 1990s. The head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Christine A. Varney, is to announce the policy reversal in a speech she will give on Monday before the Center for American Progress,...

The Wal-Mart I visited had Louisiana Sweet Potatoes on sale for 15 cents per pound. It is a reminder of the days when Senator Jay Rockefeller's grandpappy drove competitors from the oil market with one penny a barrel of oil in East Texas. I am referring to the infamous anti-trust case against Standard Oil, and how the company was broken up by the Governement into Standard of California, Standard of Indiana, etc. Louisiana law does prevent the dumping of milk -- one cannot sale milk below the cost of the milk. Apparently, Wal-Mart must feel there are too many sweet...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, worried about the fate of The Chronicle and other financially struggling newspapers, urged the Justice Department Monday to consider giving Bay Area papers more leeway to merge or consolidate business operations to stay afloat. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, released by Pelosi's office late Monday, the San Francisco Democrat asked the department to weigh the public benefit of saving The Chronicle and other papers from closure against the agency's antitrust mission to guard against anti-competitive behavior. "We must ensure that our policies enable our news organizations to survive and to engage in the...

US mainframe maker T3 Technologies has filed a lawsuit against IBM with the European Union's antitrust authority for alleged illegal bundling of mainframe software and hardware. The company is accusing IBM of violating antitrust law by refusing to sell its z/OS operating system to clients who want to run the software on systems manufactured by T3. It also accuses IBM of harming competition by withholding patent licenses for its mainframe operating system and certain intellectual property. The company has asked the EC to investigate IBM's market price for its mainframe systems. It said that based on data from San Francisco-based...

New York - White House hopeful Senator John McCain expressed concern on Thursday over DHL's proposal to hire United Parcel Service Inc to fly its packages nationwide, as it violates laws intended to encourage market competition.

Apple lawsuit not just about copyright or EULA issues, says Psystar attorneyOne of the attorneys hired by Psystar Corp. to defend it in a copyright- and trademark-infringement lawsuit brought by Apple Inc. hinted that the clone maker will bring up antitrust issues if the case goes to trial. Colby Springer, one of the three lawyers from the Palo Alto, Calif., firm of Carr & Ferrell LLP who will represent Psystar, wouldn't go into details about legal strategies but spoke in general terms about the case during an interview on Thursday. "This case has been mischaracterized," said Springer. "There are a...

UPDATE 2-EU raids Cargill, Bunge in food-price probe Thu Jul 10, 2008 10:58pm BST (Adds comments from Cargill, Bunge) BRUSSELS, July 10 (Reuters) - The European Commission raided agribusiness giants Cargill Inc [CARG.UL] and Bunge Ltd (BG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Thursday in a sweep of traders and distributors of cereals and other agricultural products for human consumption and animal feed in two EU countries. The raids come at a time when grain prices have soared to record highs amid strong demand, production problems and the use of grain to produce biofuels that have lifted food prices. "The Commission has...

Microsoft Not Under Investigation In China--Yet Shu-Ching Jean Chen, 06.20.08, 2:26 AM ET hong kong - China’s intellectual property bureau issued a formal denial Friday of press reports that asserted it was conducting an anti-monopoly probe of Microsoft. But it is likely only a temporary reprieve for the global software giant. A new anti-monopoly law will take effect Aug. 1 that has a loosely defined and seemingly low threshold for the government to initiate an official investigation: upon receipt of a complaint from an institution or a lone individual.

Korea Fines Intel $25 Million for Antitrust Violations Steven Schwankert and Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service Wed Jun 4, 11:10 PM ET The Korea Fair Trade Commission has fined Intel a reported 26 billion won (US$25.42 million) for abusing its dominant position in the microprocessor market, by offering rebates to South Korean computer makers in a way that unfairly harmed its rival Advanced Micro Devices. Intel said it was unhappy with the ruling and indicated that it will appeal it to the high court in Seoul. Bruce Sewell, Intel general counsel, said Intel believes the Fair Trade Commission did not...

Visa is scheduled to have its IPO later this week. The IPO could potentially be the largest in history. This market seems like terrible timing for an IPO, although for liquidity-strapped banks, the IPO could be a much-needed source of cash. The Visa IPO, along with the 2006 MasterCard IPO and the end to MasterCard and Visa's dual-exclusivity rules, which prohibited banks that issued MC/Visa cards from issuing Amex or Discover cards, is setting the stage for a major reconfiguration of the payments world in the next decade. These changes could have far-reaching effects for consumers, merchants, and banks because...

Antitrust: European regulators have slapped Microsoft with the biggest fine in history. If any group other than a government entity forced the company to hand over money, its members would be guilty of robbery. After previously fining Microsoft the equivalent of $1.2 billion, the European Commission last week dinged the software giant for an additional $1.4 billion. Snip... Proving that compliance isn't the regulatocracy's real goal, the commission levied the fine just days after Microsoft reportedly surrendered to the shakedown and promised it would do more cooperating and less competing with rivals. Regulators and busybodies on both sides of the...

Microsoft Corp. last week pledged a new era of cooperation with rival software developers -- and with one person who doesn't write code at all, European antitrust chief Neelie Kroes. Mrs. Kroes is spurning the olive branch. Minutes after Microsoft began a widely trumpeted news conference Thursday saying it would give competitors better access to its secret operating-system code, Mrs. Kroes's office responded that it had heard such talk before. In a news release, the regulator toted up "at least four similar statements" Microsoft had made in the past. The European Union vowed to press ahead with two investigations into...

Standing between a marriage of Microsoft and Yahoo may be the technology behemoth that has continually outsmarted them: Google. In an unusually aggressive effort to prevent Microsoft from moving forward with its $44.6 billion hostile bid for Yahoo, Google emerged over the weekend with plans to play the role of spoiler. Publicly, Google came out against the deal, contending in a statement that the pairing, proposed by Microsoft on Friday in the form of a hostile offer, would pose potential threats to competition that needed to be examined by policy makers around the world, a threat Microsoft disputed. Privately, Google...

New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said Wednesday that his office has subpoenaed documents and information from Intel Corp. in an antitrust probe into whether the semiconductor giant tried to coerce customers to exclude rivals from the marketplace. In a press release, Mr. Cuomo said the subpoena is seeking documents and information concerning Intel's pricing practices and possible attempts to exclude competitors, including its main rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., through Intel's dominate position in the market, "Our investigation is focused on determining whether Intel has improperly used monopoly power to exclude competitors or stifle innovation," Mr. Cuomo said...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Microsoft Corp. is fast becoming engulfed in the technical mapping of its own products, even as a judge's decision looms on whether to extend antitrust restrictions placed on the company for an additional five years. According to a status report filed by Microsoft on Monday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the number of outstanding technical issues requiring documentation jumped nearly 60% from the end of October to the end of November. Such technical documentation is demanded of Microsoft, with the aim of making its market-dominating software products more compatible with those...

A letter from the top two ranking members of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, Democrat Herb Kohl and Republican Orrin Hatch, seeks to chill Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick on antitrust grounds: Antitrust regulators need to be wary to guard against the creation of a powerful Internet conglomerate able to extend its market power in one market into adjacent markets, to the detriment of competition and consumers. This might not have seemed like much of a threat, even a year or two ago, but as the online world increasingly merges with the offline world, the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Four states concerned about Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) (MSFT)'s market power are pressing a federal court to extend by five years its oversight of the software company, which began in 2002 as part of a landmark antitrust settlement. The request, filed late Thursday, represents a turnabout for New York, Maryland, Louisiana and Florida. In August, the group signed onto court papers submitted by the Justice Department that said the consent decree reached in 2002 had achieved its goal of safeguarding competition in certain software markets. In their newest filing, however, the states said that while "competitive developments in...

Computer chips are getting faster and smaller, and prices are dropping amid fierce competition. So naturally the European Commission thinks this is the ideal time to lodge another antitrust suit against another American technology titan. Last Friday, EU regulators accused Intel Corp. of offering computer makers -- brace yourself -- rebates designed to harm rival Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, in the chip market. In Brussels jargon, that's an "abuse of a dominant position" and could lead to a fine of as much as 10% of Intel's annual global turnover, or perhaps €3.5 billion... The investigations were prompted by AMD,...

BERKELEY, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Will Microsoft Corp. design, produce and ship a branded computer in the United States? It's already doing this in India without fanfare. Nobody has considered the possibility that the Microsoft PC in India is a market test for a bigger rollout. As of this writing the company isn't saying. Reports out of India are sketchy. Over the years, Microsoft has been accused of copying what Apple Inc. does, as far as user interface is concerned. Why not copy the idea of an entire branded computer, too? After all, with the Zune player, Microsoft has played follow-the-leader...

WASHINGTON, June 28 — Striking down an antitrust rule nearly a century old, the Supreme Court ruled today that it is no longer automatically unlawful for manufacturers and distributors to agree on setting minimum retail prices. The decision will give producers significantly more leeway, though not unlimited power, to dictate retail prices and to restrict the flexibility of discounters. Five justices said the new rule could, in some instances, lead to more competition and better service. But four dissenting justices agreed with the submission of 37 states and consumer groups that the abandonment of the old rule would lead to...

CHICAGO (Reuters) -- Microsoft has agreed to modify its new Vista operating system in response to complaints that its desktop search function puts Google Inc. and other potential competitors at a disadvantage, a source familiar with the case told Reuters Tuesday.The Justice Department and Microsoft are expected to provide details of the proposed changes in a joint report filed in federal court later Tuesday, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The source provided no details on what changes Microsoft had agreed to make.A spokesman for Microsoft had no immediate comment.Report: More flaws found in Microsoft's VistaIn a complaint...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Internet search leader Google Inc. is trying to convince federal and state authorities that Microsoft Corp.'s Vista operating system is stifling competition as the high-tech heavyweights wrestle for the allegiance of personal computer users.

Click to read article. Would not allow me to excerpt due to copyright. http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070518/BUSINESS01/705180389

AMD has the following notes on a transcript from the Intel anti trust case. Apparently Intel can't stop deleting e-mail. Funny. Attached is a court transcript from a meeting that occurred last Wednesday in Delaware between counsel for AMD/Intel and Special Master Poppiti after the hearing with Judge Farnan. After giving it a once-over, it seems to me that here’s where the most newsworthy meat is to be found from the 58 page transcript, in page order: Page 12, beginning at line 15 – Intel CEO Paul Otellini is revealed to be one of the Intel executives who is not...

Whether Intel suffers severe legal consequences for failing to save all potential evidence in Advanced Micro Devices' antitrust lawsuit against the chipmaker will depend in large part on whether Intel can convince a judge it followed best practices. [snip] "They're going to have a very hard time defending their process," Robert Brownstone, law and technology director at the law firm Fenwick & West in San Francisco, said. [snip] Intel acknowledges that ... a small number of hundreds of employees whose e-mail was deemed as potential evidence failed to move all messages to their hard drive, which means the e-mail would...

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The European Union threatened Microsoft Corp. on Thursday with fines as high as $4 million a day, claiming the software company was still not offering a fair deal to rivals seeking to make their products more compatible with Windows. Microsoft said the EU Commission's demands were not reasonable. "We believe we have been fair in setting" prices for the information, said Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith."It is hard to see how the Commission can argue that even patented innovation must be made available for free," he said in a statement.The EU complained that three years after...

BRUSSELS -- The European Union unveiled an ambitious blueprint for combating global warming and boosting energy efficiency, but key elements of the plan face strong opposition from business interests and could require major battles to get them implemented. The European Commission yesterday published a long-awaited proposal for the bloc's first common energy strategy, a version of which will be discussed at a summit of the EU's 27 national leaders in March. "Europe must lead the world into a new -- or maybe one should say post-industrial -- revolution: the development of a low-carbon economy," said commission President José Manuel Barroso....

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- A federal court in Chicago has allowed the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors to proceed, the department said Tuesday. The court rejected the association's argument that last-minute changes to its policies prevented judicial scrutiny, the department said. In denying the association's motion to dismiss the case, the court said that "NAR has failed ... to demonstrate that this case should be dismissed at the outset," according to the Justice Department. In September 2005 the department's antitrust division filed a lawsuit charging that NAR rules limit competition from real-estate brokers who use the...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has issued an opinion in which Judge Easterbrook declares, "[t]he GPL and open-source have nothing to fear from the antitrust laws." The case is called Wallace v. IBM., No. 06-2454. [Download a copy of the opinion.] Internet Cases covered the lower court's decision from last December here. Plaintiff Wallace filed an antitrust suit against IBM, Red Hat and Novell, arguing that those companies had conspired to eliminate competition in the operating system market by making Linux available at an "unbeatable" price (free) under the General Public License ("GPL"). The U.S. District...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has issued an opinion in which Judge Easterbrook declares, "[t]he GPL and open-source have nothing to fear from the antitrust laws." The case is called Wallace v. IBM., No. 06-2454. [Download a copy of the opinion.] Internet Cases covered the lower court's decision from last December here. Plaintiff Wallace filed an antitrust suit against IBM, Red Hat and Novell, arguing that those companies had conspired to eliminate competition in the operating system market by making Linux available at an "unbeatable" price (free) under the General Public License ("GPL"). The U.S. District...

Microsoft and the European Commission appeared to be stepping back from months of conflict over the Vista operating system, after the US software group revealed on Friday that it had made significant changes to its new flagship product ahead of Vista’s launch next month.Although the Brussels-based antitrust regulator stressed that it had not given a “green light” to Microsoft, Neelie Kroes, the European Union competition commissioner, gave an upbeat assessment.“They promised they would behave and take into account our rules and regulations. Well, I’m a happy woman,’’ she told Reuters.Microsoft’s competitors said they needed more time to assess the changes...

European Union investigators believe they have enough evidence to pursue formal antitrust charges against Intel Corp., a critical step in their five-year probe of the computer-chip maker, according to two people with knowledge of the case. Investigators for the European Commission in Brussels have prepared a written draft of charges against Intel... After that process, a report will be sent to European antitrust chief Neelie Kroes, who will make a final decision, likely before the end of the year, on whether to issue formal charges against the Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker... Intel would then get two months to issue...