Harking back to major antitrust cases of the 1990s, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that Microsoft’s refusal to share with rivals interface data for its upcoming operating system did not violate antitrust law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided that a consumer could not bring an antitrust suit to challenge Apple’s efforts to limit the availability of compatible digital music for the iPod.
Other antitrust developments of note included an opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit questioning whether shippers alleging price fixing by railroads satisfied the predominance requirement necessary to pursue their claims as a class and the European Commission’s approval of an airline merger that it had blocked two years ago because one of the parties had since become a failing firm.
