Recent Major Trends

One of the major changes in antitrust in recent years is the increasing interest in and focus on antitrust issues by other countries , which until now has been virtually nonexistent or widely different. The involvement of the European Commission and some of the national authorities like the German Federal Cartel Office, in antitrust regulation has significantly increased. As a result, today, antitrust lawyers must be aware of the impact of international competition rules and regulators. For an antitrust practice or practitioner not to have a significant transnational component and capability will mean an increasing inability to provide effective assistance.

A second major change is the increasing involvement by state attorneys general in antitrust enforcement. In the last 15 years or so, states have become more involved in antitrust than ever before. Their positions are sometimes congruent with prevailing federal interpretations of antitrust law, but sometimes they are different. The approach to negotiating and litigating , and settling with state attorneys general is different from that with the FTC or DOJ, particularly when actions are brought on a multistate basis, and antitrust lawyers increasingly must be familiar with the nuances of counseling and litigating in the state enforcement context.