Areas of Legal Expertise

• Activities Involving Competitors: We handle litigation and provide counseling on questions involving arrangements among members of the same industry, including price fixing, bid rigging, group boycotts, information-sharing, strategic alliances, and benchmarking. We also represent many trade associations as antitrust counsel.
• Antitrust Litigation: We have a broad range of antitrust litigation experience in cases involving price fixing, bid rigging, market division, monopolization and attempted monopolization, group boycotts, tying, and exclusive dealing. We have litigated both civil and criminal antitrust cases and represented clients in significant Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice proceedings. More than 20 of our antitrust lawyers have significant experience in trial-level proceedings.
• Antitrust Class Action: We have been actively engaged in more than 11 antitrust class action suits within recent years. In this capacity, we have served as national counsel for several multinational clients. Our recent experience in antitrust class actions includes handling both federal and state cases.
• Antitrust Plaintiff’s Opt-Out Litigation: We represent corporations affected by price fixing conspiracies or other anticompetitive behavior and help them obtain recovery of their overpayments. By opting out of class actions and pursuing their own direct claims, our clients often able to achieve significantly better and faster results than they would otherwise receive by remaining class members.
• Compliance: We prepare state-of-the-art antitrust compliance plans and programs for large and small companies. Our robust antitrust compliance strategies include conducting comprehensive antitrust audits. Conducting regular audits as part of an antitrust compliance program helps clients to uncover potential risks, identify corrective solutions, and minimize liability in the event of an antitrust investigation.
• Criminal Antitrust Investigations and Prosecutions: We represent corporations and individuals in connection with state and federal criminal investigations involving allegations of price fixing, bid rigging and collusion. We conduct internal investigations, respond to Grand Jury subpoenas, and make presentations to prosecutors and government decision makers. Together with experienced white collar criminal defense lawyers in our firm, we are experienced in representing our clients in criminal jury trials.
• Government Investigations: We represent corporations and other entities to defend civil and criminal investigations by state and federal enforcement agencies in a wide range of areas involving potential antitrust law enforcement, including allegations of collusion, bid rigging, group boycotts, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances, and compliance with other statues and regulations.
• Intellectual Property and Antitrust: We advise our clients concerning patent/antitrust issues and analyze antitrust implications of intellectual property licensing arrangements.
• International: We routinely counsel our clients regarding European Union competition and monopolies law matters. As part of our firm’s merger and acquisition practice, our lawyers analyze the applicability of worldwide merger control laws to a proposed transaction. In addition, represent clients in merger control and cooperative joint venture matters before the European Commission. We also represent our clients in merger investigations and provide general competition law counseling concerning the national laws of European member countries. With offices in both Europe and Asia, we are involved in client matters related to competition, monopolies, and merger notification issues throughout the world.
• Joint Ventures: We regularly analyze antitrust and premerger notification issues relating to the formation and operation of both production and R&D joint ventures, as well as compliance with the National Cooperative Research and Production Act.
• Mergers and Acquisitions: We provide our clients with premerger analysis of transactions and prepare Premerger Notification and Report Forms under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act. We also represent our clients in merger investigations before the Federal Trade Commission, U.S. Department of Justice, and state attorneys general. This representation includes assisting clients that are parties to potential mergers or other business combinations under scrutiny or litigation by antitrust enforcers, as well as representing clients in challenges to anticompetitive business combinations in their industries.
• Resale Pricing and Other Distribution Issues: We analyze the antitrust implications of various resale restrictions, including pricing, advertised pricing, and customer and territorial restraints imposed by suppliers or distributors. We have worked closely with large and small companies to understand their business strategies and have helped implement effective and sensible plans, including but not limited to minimum advertised price (“MAP”) policies.
• Single-Firm Activities: We provide counseling and undertake litigation concerning allegations of monopolization and attempted monopolization. The issues considered include predatory pricing, refusals to deal, and product bundling by firms with substantial market positions.