Archive for the 'News' Category
September 8, 2014
In an interesting case that caught my eye earlier today, the U.S. FTC announced a proposed settlement with Texas-based Applied Food Sciences Inc. (AFS) in relation to allegedly “baseless” green coffee extract weight loss claims.
August 29, 2014
Earlier today, Canada’s Competition Bureau announced that it has launched a new Quarterly Report as part of its ongoing “Transparency Initiative” (i.e., to increase its communication to Canadians regarding the work the Bureau does). According to the Bureau, its new Quarterly Report “presents statistics relating to a variety of intake measures, merger and non-merger enforcement matters, as well as advocacy, outreach and partnership initiatives”. I discuss a few key points below that caught my eye.
August 15, 2014
CBC has reported that Canada’s Conservative Government still plans to introduce new competition rules in Canada to address the “Canada-U.S. price gap”. Despite significant criticism from Canadian businesses, competition law practitioners and other policy commentators (see for example the CD Howe Institute’s two companion reports recommending that the proposal be abandoned: here and here and my own comments here), according to CBC the Conservatives “intend to move forward on it in due course” and see it as a “budget commitment”.
July 22, 2014
In an interesting case that caught my eye yesterday and today, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed a settlement in a case involving allegations that an online bar code re-seller engaged in an “invitation to collude” under Section 5 of the U.S. FTC Act. See: Different methods, same old antitrust problem and Two barcode resellers settle FTC charges that principals invited competitors to collude.
July 22, 2014
Guest post
(Steve J. Cernak, Gregory L. Curtner, William M. Hannay – Schiff Hardin)
FTC Action Shows All Commissioners Agree That Section 5 Liability Can Follow Competitor Communications On Price Even When No Agreement Is Reached
July 19, 2014
In Canada, the United States and many other open western and eastern economies we fortunately live in free markets. That is to say companies in any sector can enter, devise a new product (or improve on an existing products), compete and reap the free market rewards of doing so – with risk comes reward.
July 11, 2014
Well summer is here and I have to admit that my blog output has slowed a bit (and likely will through the summer). Nevertheless, on my daily media and competition authorities sweep earlier I read what I thought was a rather interesting note by the Irish Competition Authority on collective action by voluntary trade associations: What’s the story … with the IMO representing their members?.
July 11, 2014
The OECD has posted the papers from its recent (October 2013) discussion of ex officio cartel investigations and the use of screens to detect cartels.
Templates/precedents and checklists to run promotional contests in Canada
Templates/precedents and checklists to comply with Canadian anti-spam law (CASL)
