On Monday, a US District Court dealt a huge blow to the federal government\u2019s antitrust case against Facebook by dismissing a complaint filed against the company by the Federal Trade Commission. The lawsuit, filed late last year, sought to unwind Facebook\u2019s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The judge also dismissed an associated case filed by a group of state attorneys general.<\/p>\n
In its initial complaint, the FTC alleged that Facebook violated federal antitrust laws by purchasing a would-be competitor in the social media market. But in his decision to dismiss the complaint Monday, Judge James E. Boasberg wrote that the FTC offered insufficient evidence for its central claim \u2014 that Facebook wields monopoly power.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe FTC has failed to plead enough facts to plausibly establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims \u2014namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for Personal Social Networking (PSN) Services,\u201d Boasberg wrote. \u201cThe complaint contains nothing on that score save the naked allegation that the company has had and still has a \u2018dominant share of th[at] market (in excess of 60%).\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Boasberg also dismissed the claims against Facebook\u2019s interoperability restrictions, finding that the policies were implemented too long ago to be subject to FTC action.<\/p>\n Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Verge<\/em>. However, the company\u2019s stock surged in response to the dismissal, clearing $1 trillion in market capitalization for the first time in Facebook history. <\/p>\n The ruling also struck down a parallel anti-monopoly case against Facebook filed by a coalition of state attorneys general. Nearly every state attorney general signed onto a lawsuit against Facebook in December, making similar allegations as the FTC case. But Boasberg dismissed that case in an accompanying decision on Monday, holding that a specific civil law doctrine prevented the coalition from challenging acquisitions settled so many years in the past. <\/p>\n Notably, Judge Boasberg left room for the FTC to revise its case and unwind past Facebook mergers. The commission has until July 29th to file a new complaint outlining its argument regarding Facebook\u2019s market dominance, and the judge made it clear that the FTC\u2019s case was not affected by the civil doctrine that doomed the state attorneys general.<\/p>\n \u201cAn injunction under Section 13(b) is a theoretically available remedy in a Section 2 challenge to long-ago mergers,\u201d Boasberg wrote in the FTC opinion, \u201cso long as the defendant still holds the purchased assets or stock, as is the case here.\u201d<\/p>\n Boasberg also noted the inherent difficulty of establishing monopoly power for a free online service, as the FTC is now required to do. \u201cThis case involves no ordinary or intuitive market,\u201d Boasberg\u2019s opinion reads. \u201cRather, PSN [Personal Social Networking] services are free to use, and the exact metes and bounds of what even constitutes a PSN service \u2014 i.e.<\/em>, which features of a company\u2019s mobile app or website are included in that definition and which are excluded \u2014 are hardly crystal clear.\u201d<\/p>\n The court\u2019s dismissal could provoke more aggressive action from the legislature, as Congress is currently pushing forward on sweeping tech antitrust reforms. Last week, the House Judiciary Committee approved a slate of bills targeting Big Tech\u2019s market power, including bans on large mergers and new interoperability requirements. All six measures are headed to the House floor and parallel bills are expected to be introduced in the Senate over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n \u201cToday\u2019s development in the FTC\u2019s case against Facebook shows that antitrust reform is urgently needed,\u201d Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee\u2019s antitrust subcommittee, said in a tweet Monday. \u201cCongress needs to provide additional tools and resources to our antitrust enforcers to go after Big Tech companies engaging in anticompetitive conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Monday, a US District Court dealt a huge blow to the federal government\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[38,64,62,66,63,65,69,67,71,68,70],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itparadise.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itparadise.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itparadise.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itparadise.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itparadise.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itparadise.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1998,"href":"https:\/\/itparadise.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions\/1998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itparadise.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itparadise.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itparadise.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itparadise.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u201cThis case involves no ordinary or intuitive market\u201d<\/q><\/aside>\n