This week’s look at antitrust news features a group of liquid-crystal display panel manufacturers accused of conspiring to fix prices, the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust investigation of Intel and the effects it will have on the computer industry, a milk-pricing investigation in New York, and the dismissal of Novell’s antitrust complaints against Microsoft.

Samsung/Sharp – Samsung, Sharp Must Face Class-Action Antitrust Suit (Update3) | Bloomberg News

After admitting guilt to price-fixing, an international group of flat-panel producing companies will now have to stand another court-ordered assault against their money vaults. Karen Gullo reports on this development from San Francisco:

Samsung Electronics Co., Sharp Corp. and other makers of liquid-crystal display panels must face group claims in an antitrust lawsuit by purchasers of televisions, computer monitors and laptops, a judge ruled.

U.S. District Judge Susan Y. Illston in San Francisco certified the case as a class action on behalf of direct purchasers who bought the flat-panel screens or goods containing them from 1999 to 2006, according to a court filing yesterday. Consumers in 22 states and the District of Columbia also can sue the companies as a group for damages, Illston ruled.

And, interestingly enough, it’s not just the end-users that are getting their day in court.

Dell Inc., the third-largest personal computer maker; Nokia Oyj, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones; and AT&T Inc. also sued LCD makers in federal court in San Francisco claiming they were victims of price-fixing by the manufacturers.

The amount of money the group collectively stands to lose is significant but by throwing themselves on the mercy of the court, and settling rather than fighting, Samsung, Epson, Sharp and other involved parties might come out with some of their loot still in hand.

Intel – FTC’s Intel Anti-Trust Case Proposes Huge Changes to the Computer Industry | The Portlander

Although the article is a bit dated, Peter S. Kastner detailed look at the FTC’s complaints against chip manufacturing giant, Intel, reveals some of the inner workings of exactly how many pounds of flesh the US government hopes to remove, and in what way. Kastner writes:

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust and competitive complaint has already faded from the 24×7 news cycle.  In an announcement December 16th entitled ‘FTC Challenges Intel’s Dominance of Worldwide Microprocessor Markets,’ the FTC stated it has sued Intel, charging that it has “illegally used its dominant market position for a decade to stifle competition and strengthen its monopoly.”

A close reading of the FTC’s contemplated relief for Intel’s alleged conduct shows the government mandating the most sweeping changes ever proposed as to how the Intel-compatible computer market works.  No surprise that Intel would be hurt badly by these mandates and have to adjust.  But these industry changes would also dramatically change the computer ecosystem, and the consequences would not be good for PC consumers.

Kastner correctly points out that should the FTC’s remedies be implemented, the result for chip makers and those who use their products (basically everyone these days) will be the reinvention of the digital wheel. There’s plenty of detailed analysis and some choice passages from the FTC’s proposed solution in the rest of Kastner’s piece. Click on, fearless, and constant, reader!

NY Dairy Farmers – Schumer, US antitrust official hear milk-pricing complaints from NY dairy farmers, consumers | StarTribune

Consolidation in the dairy industry has led some farmers to believe there are anticompetitive practices keeping them from getting their fair share of milk profits and New York’s Senator Charles Shumer plans to get to the bottom of things. His first move was to research the problem as the Associated Press’ Carolyn Thompson describes:

A report released by Schumer’s office in November found that the price paid to dairy farmers fell by almost half since January 2009. At the same time, the retail price of milk fell just 15 percent.

Others in the agriculture business are also lending credence to the claims by dairy farmers in New York that there is some malicious behavior afoot.

About 40 percent of what consumers pay for milk goes back to the farm where it was produced, said Jonathan Taylor of the New York Farm Bureau.

“Many in the dairy industry view this low farmer share in the retail price of milk as proof of anticompetitive behavior by dairy processors and manufacturers, which have undergone phenomenal consolidation over the past two decades,” he said. “Like David and Goliath, a family farm is at a distinct disadvantage in dealing with such businesses.”

Not even enough for grocery money get back into the hands of farmers such as the Maine family who “called 2009 ‘the worst year of our lives.’” Whether or not there are anticompetitive forces at work in the dairy business, one thing is sure: farmers are not making a living selling their milk while the people handling it and reselling it are. One company that buys milk from farmers for resale, Dean Foods, even reported “record profits” at a time when “dairy prices were in freefall across the country.”

Novell/Microsoft – Remaining Novell antitrust complaints against Microsoft dismissed | ZDNet

Although they recently scored a victory against software rival SCO, Novell didn’t fare quite so well in its bid to get the court system to force Microsoft to reveal interoperability secrets. After failing to gain a profitable market share against Microsoft’s Office Suite with their competing WordPerfect and Quattro Pro products, Novell decided to sue their way to happiness with less than satisfactory results. Mary Jo Foley provides much-needed clarity:

The U.S. District Court in Maryland dismissed the last two outstanding antitrust claims Novell filed against Microsoft in 2004 involving WordPerfect and Quattro Pro, two software products Novell owned between 1994 and 1996.

And here’s the beef:

Novell claimed Microsoft withheld interoperability information it needed to enable those products to run well on Windows. Microsoft tried to get Novell’s complaint dismissed, claiming that it was Novell’s “own mismanagement and poor business decisions” that tanked WordPerfect and Quattro Pro. Plus, Microsoft argued, since Novell sold WordPerfect to Corel now 12 years ago, their claims should be barred under the Statute of Limitations.

You can’t win them all, Novell. Sorry that your office productivity software products were so terrible that you couldn’t give them away but suing isn’t always the best way to get revenge.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. – Judge Tosses Antitrust Suit Vs. Bristol, Sanofi Over Plavix | Fox Business

A group of retails recently lost in their bid to prove ”that a proposed patent-litigation settlement among drug makers in 2006 deprived pharmacies of inexpensive, generic copies of the blockbuster blood thinner Plavix.” Bristol-Myers Squibb didn’t see it that way and the judge agreed.

Kroger and the other plaintiffs, including Walgreen Co. (WAG: 37.72, 0.64, 1.73%), CVS Caremark Corp. (CVS: 36.23, -0.33, -0.9%) and some drug distributors, filed their antitrust lawsuit beginning in 2006, arguing the proposed Plavix patent settlement was anticompetitive. They said the deal closed off the possibility of a more favorable settlement, one that might have avoided a trial and resulted in the availability of generic Plavix well before the 2011 patent expiration.

But Sanofi, Bristol and Apotex argued that the antitrust suit should be dismissed because Kroger and the other plaintiffs lacked standing under antitrust law.

Judge Michael Watson of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio lays out the end game in this significant trial with smiles for the victors and silence from the vanquished:

“Plaintiffs fail to demonstrate that the alleged antitrust violation was a necessary predicate of Plaintiffs’ injury and the asserted injury is speculative,” the judge wrote in a 49-page opinion released Friday.

A Bristol-Myers spokeswoman said Bristol and Sanofi are pleased with the decision. A Kroger spokeswoman and a lawyer for Kroger and other plaintiffs couldn’t be reached. An Apotex spokesman couldn’t be reached.

Bonus antitrust piece o’ the week: Lawyers Galore in FTC’s Intel Case by Jenna Greene at The Blog of Legal Times (or BLT for short)

Here’s another installment in ACT’s weekly review of antitrust news articles of note. This week we feature Monsanto’s on-going battle to disprove DuPont’s claim of the seed maker’s “monopolistic” behavior, an Ohio-based company’s court-ordered scrutiny of Google’s AdWord service, Intel’s assurance that the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit is “misguided” and a report on the decline of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser after the implementation of a browser ballot in Europe.

Monsanto – The Seeds Of An Antitrust Disaster In Iowa | Forbes.com

Geoffrey Manne, Executive Director of the International Center for Law & Economics and Lecturer in Law at Lewis & Clark Law School, takes a closer look at inquiries being made into Monsanto’s seed business and discovers that the company’s contracts with purchasers of its genetically-modified seed stock are carefully negotiated to allow the purchase any intellectual property (IP) rights that the purchaser desires and he suggests DuPont’s claims “that Monsanto uses certain clauses in its licenses to prevent manufacturers from combining—or ‘stacking’—Monsanto’s seed” are unfounded.

Monsanto’s detractors have failed to demonstrate that its conduct harms competition. And meanwhile, its competitors—especially DuPont—continue to gain market share and to invest heavily in competing technology. In fact, in contrast to the claims it seems to be making to antitrust enforcers, in public filings and statements DuPont presents evidence of a robust, competitive industry. DuPont’s CEO, Ellen J. Kullman, recently told investors and analysts that the industry is in “an incredibly competitive period,” and the company gained market share in both the corn and soybean seed markets last year. This doesn’t sound like a market constrained by a rapacious monopolist.

Manne will be covering related news at a related event today where ”the Antitrust Division will join the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the first of a yearlong series of workshops focusing on competition in the agricultural sector.” There’s sure to be plenty of hot, legal action as Monsanto and DuPont assert their positions on the business of genetically-modified seeds.

IBM – IBM on antitrust defense in Europe | ZDNet

Dana Blankenhorn reports on a French software company’s complaint that IBM is acting unfairly by blocking the use of competing programs on its mainframe computers. He writes:

By tying use of its mainframe software to IBM hardware, TurboHercules charges, IBM is preventing open source from competing. The company’s complaint said it tried to do business with IBM last year, but was met by an intellectual property complaint.

The U.S. Justice Department has been investigating IBM’s mainframe business since last year, but given the EU’s recent $1.45 billion fine against Intel, its antitrust regulators are now feared more than their U.S. counterparts.

This case may go deeper, however. IBM has become recognized as an open source leader. You can argue that open source saved IBM, allowing it to unify product lines under Linux, offload development costs, and create new alliances.

IBM is no stranger when it comes to cries of unfair market practices but as the company is one of the major users and integrators of open source software, it is hard to imagine that TurboHercules’ claims will fall on sympathetic ears, even if they happen to be European ones.

Google AdWord – Google Must Answer Questions About Ad System | NationalJournal.com

If Google *were* hiding behind some kind of magical curtain, the man behind the curtain is about to be revealed. That is, if the man can be said to be Google’s extremely profitable, and at times, controversial, AdWord service. Neil Munro enlightens the gentle reader on this new twist that recalls dreams of being naked on stage before an un-admiring audience:

A small online-mall firm has won an Ohio judge’s approval to inspect the inner workings of Google’s closely-held online advertising software, which its high-tech rivals say is illegally rigged to help Google and hurt its competitors.

The decision Wednesday by Franklin County Common Pleas Judge John Bessey rejecting Google’s plea to delay discovery “gives us an opportunity to start gathering the evidence and documents that we need to prove our case… there’s no limits on what we can ask for” except relevance, said Joseph Bial, a D.C.-based special counsel in the antitrust group at New York-based Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft representing Ohio-based myTriggers.com.

“Discovery will commence immediately,” he said.

“No limits for what we can ask for,” they say? Are there limits to what Google will have to provide in response to this limitless probing? This whole dog-and-pony show might just be a pretense for more mischievous machinations. Monro details the needful wishes of Google’s competitors:

The Ohio court case is significant because competing high-tech companies are hoping that Google becomes the target of a federal antitrust case. The company’s popular software makes it the market leader in the online advertising sector, but advocates for other companies — including Microsoft — say it is illegally abusing its market power.

Well, Microsoft should know a thing or two being accused of “illegally abusing its market power” and have, no doubt, already penned up a very long (and helpful) amicus brief for submission at the first possible (in?)convenient opportunity. Excellent stuff! Be sure to read what Google has to say about the claims by reading the entire piece at the link above.

Microsoft – Microsoft Browser Use Down Following Antitrust Settlement | redOrbit

After agreeing to create a web browser ballot for its European Windows OS users as a term of its EU antitrust case loss, Microsoft is seeing a disturbing trend in the installation of its Internet Explorer web browser application. The decrease in the popularity of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is not great, but it could pick up steam as users become more aware that there are many other options to chose from via the ballot.

Internet Explorer use has decreased in Britain by 1-percent, Italy by 1.3-percent, and France by 2.5-percent, according to information provided to Reuters by Statcounter, a web statistics provider. Meanwhile, Opera Software reports that usage of their web browser has doubled across the continent, and tripled in select areas, including Italy, Poland, and Spain.

The shift in Internet browser popularity is due largely to the launch of browserchoice.eu, a website established by Microsoft in response to antitrust accusations levied by the European Union.

The site, which is being automatically displayed for more than 200 million users in select locations throughout Europe, shows Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer alongside some of its top competitors, including Safari, Google Chrome, Opera Turbo, and Mozilla Firefox.

The makers of the FireFox web browser are seeing increases in the number of people installing their software via the mandated browser and the company has been quoted as saying, ”We expect these numbers to increase as the Ballot Choice screen fully rolls out across all countries.”

Intel – Intel: FTC antitrust lawsuit is ‘misguided’ | ZDNet

Intel continues to defend itself against an ever-increasing litany of unfair practices in the computer chip market, and now has to add graphics processing units (GPUs) to the list of products that are of interest to the FTC. Matthew Broersma has more on this growing morass of intellectual property troubles for Intel:

“The FTC’s case is misguided. It is based largely on claims that the FTC added at the last minute and has not investigated,” the chipmaker said in a statement on Wednesday. “Intel has competed fairly and lawfully. Its actions have benefited consumers.”

The company said it had progressed “very far” in talks to settle the case, rather than bring it to court. However, the FTC had asked for remedies that would have made it “impossible” for Intel to conduct business, according to the chipmaker.

“This case could have, and should have, been settled,” said Intel senior vice president and general counsel Doug Melamed in a statement. “The FTC’s rush to file this case will cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.”

Rival GPU manufacturer NVIDIA is firmly behind the FTC’s on-going investigation of Intel’s business practices in the graphic chip marketplace and will certainly be watching the case closely as many hundreds of millions in profit hand in the balance.