Antitrust and Consumer Protection
Competition: Spring 2015, Vol. 24, No. 1
Content
- California Antitrust and Unfair Competition Law and Federal and State Procedural Law Developments
- Chair's Column
- Editor's Note
- How Viable Is the Prospect of Enforcement of Privacy Rights In the Age of Big Data? An Overview of Trends and Developments In Consumer Privacy Class Actions
- Keynote Address: a Conversation With the Honorable Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, Justice of the California Supreme Court
- Major League Baseball Is Exempt From the Antitrust Laws - Like It or Not: the "Unrealistic," "Inconsistent," and "Illogical" Antitrust Exemption For Baseball That Just Won't Go Away.
- Masthead
- Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide: In the Age of Big Data Is Data Security Possible and Can the Enforcement Agencies and Private Litigation Ensure Your Online Information Remains Safe and Private? a Roundtable
- Restoring Balance In the Test For Exclusionary Conduct
- St. Alphonsus Medical Center-nampa and Ftc V St. Luke's Health System Ltd.: a Panel Discussion On This Big Stakes Trial
- St. Alphonsus Medical Center - Nampa, Inc., Et Al. and Federal Trade Commission, Et Al. V St. Luke's Health System, Ltd., and Saltzer Medical Group, P.a.: a Physicians' Practice Group Merger's Journey Through Salutary Health-related Goals, Irreparable Harm, Self-inflicted Wounds, and the Remedy of Divestiture
- The Baseball Exemption: An Anomaly Whose Time Has Run
- The Continuing Violations Doctrine: Limitation In Name Only, or a Resuscitation of the Clayton Act's Statute of Limitations?
- The Doctor Is In, But Your Medical Information Is Out Trends In California Privacy Cases Relating To Release of Medical Information
- The State of Data-breach Litigation and Enforcement: Before the 2013 Mega Breaches and Beyond
- The United States V. Bazaarvoice Merger Trial: a Panel Discussion Including Insights From Trial Counsel
- United States V. Bazaarvoice: the Role of Customer Testimony In Clayton Act Merger Challenges
UNITED STATES V. BAZAARVOICE: THE ROLE OF CUSTOMER TESTIMONY IN CLAYTON ACT MERGER CHALLENGES
By Gregory J. Werden1
I. INTRODUCTION
In June 2012 Bazaarvoice, Inc. acquired its primary competitor PowerReviews, Inc. The Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice promptly began investigating, and in January 2013, the Department brought suit in the Northern District of California seeking to unwind the deal. Following extraordinarily extensive third-party discovery and a three-week trial, Judge William H. Orrick held that the acquisition violated Section 7 of the Clayton Act.2 Bazaarvoice then stipulated to the entry of a final judgment unwinding the deal, so there was no appeal.
The court found that Bazaarvoice was by far the largest provider of "product ratings and reviews platforms," which are software tools and associated services for soliciting and disseminating customer feedback on e-commerce websites. PowerReviews was the second largest provider of such platforms.3