The Supreme Court last week, ruling in the final two of a trio of antitrust challenges this term, significantly raised the bar for those attempting to prove anti-competitive behavior by joint ventures and certain patent holders.

The high court decisions, said antitrust litigators and scholars, reflected a court trying, in one case, to “catch up” with current economic thinking, and in another case, to “clean up” a lower court ruling that put at risk a widely used business arrangement.