On April 18, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), Justice Department (“DOJ”), and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) launched an online reporting portal, HealthyCompetition.gov, for the public to report potentially unfair and anticompetitive health care practices. The online reporting portal provides examples of unfair and anticompetitive health care practices under existing antitrust laws including:

  1. “consolidation,
Continue Reading All Gas No Brakes – The FTC, DOJ, and HHS Unveil Online Reporting Portal as Latest Effort to Combat Unfair and Anticompetitive Health Care Practices

A recent motion for preliminary approval of a class action settlement filed in federal court in Georgia will bring to a close claims asserted on behalf of a class of Porsche owners for a purportedly botched over-the-air (“OTA”) software update sent to their vehicles. But a recent decision by a California federal court suggests that manufacturers may be able to avoid claims for violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) so long as they do not “blatantly misdescribe” the OTA updates they transmit to vehicle owners. Taken together, these cases signal the challenges automakers will face in defending software malfunction cases and the benefits of robust disclosure when transmitting OTA software updates.Continue Reading Computers on Wheels: One OEM Settles Claims While Another Scores a Win in Cases Involving Allegedly Botched OTA Updates

This post was originally published as a Seyfarth Legal Update.

In a January 11, 2023 op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, President Joe Biden urged “Democrats and Republicans to come together to pass strong bipartisan legislation to hold Big Tech accountable.” He warned that the “risks Big Tech poses for ordinary Americans are clear. Big Tech companies collect huge amounts of data” about technology users, including “the places we go,” and argued that “we need serious federal protections for Americans’ privacy. That means clear limits on how companies can collect, use and share highly personal data,” including location data.Continue Reading Buckle Up: How Privacy Policy And Antitrust Enforcement Could Affect Automakers In 2023

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced the indictment by a grand jury charging four owners/managers of home health care agencies in Maine with participating in a conspiracy to suppress wages and restrict the job mobility of personal support specialist (PSS) workers in violation of Section 1 of the federal Sherman Act. According to the indictment, the owners/managers agreed to fix the rates paid to these workers and also agreed not to hire each other’s workers. The DOJ warned in a press release that “[t]his indictment is the first in this ongoing investigation into wage fixing and worker allocation schemes in the PSS industry,” and part of a larger “ongoing federal antitrust investigation into wage fixing and worker allocation in the home health care industry.”
Continue Reading Alleged “No-Poach” Agreement in Health Care Industry Results in Another Criminal Antitrust Prosecution