Recently, a federal district court in California granted partial summary judgment for the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in an important intellectual property and antitrust case involving standard essential patents (SEP). The court’s decision requires an SEP holder to license its SEPs for cellular communication standards to all applicants willing to pay a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) rate, regardless of whether the applicant supplies components or end-devices. The decision represents a significant victory for the FTC in enforcing its views of an SEP holder’s commitments to license patents on FRAND terms.
Today, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim announced a series of reforms with the express goal to resolve most merger investigations within six months of filing. The reforms seek to place the burden of faster reviews not only on the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), but also on the merging parties.
The DOJ will require fewer custodians, take fewer depositions, and commit to shorter time-periods in exchange for merging parties providing detailed information to the DOJ early in the investigation in some cases before a Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) filing is made. AAG Delrahim believes that merging parties need to avoid “hid[ing] the eight ball” and work with the DOJ in good faith to remedy transactions that raise competitive concerns.
By announcing these reforms, the DOJ acknowledges that merger reviews are taking longer in recent years. AAG Delrahim cited a recent report noting that the length of merger reviews has increased 65 percent since 2013 and that the average length of a significant merger review is now roughly 11 months. AAG Delrahim believes an assortment of factors contribute to the increasing length of reviews including larger quantities of documents produced during a Second Request, increasing numbers of transactions with international implications, and the DOJ’s insistence on an upfront buyer for most consent orders. (more…)
A recent settlement shows that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will use its enforcement authority to target employer collusion in the labor market.
WHAT HAPPENED
The FTC brought a complaint against a medical staffing agency, Your Therapy Source, LLC, and the owner of a competing staffing agency, Integrity Home Therapy, for allegedly agreeing to reduce the rates they would pay to their staff. Simultaneously, the FTC settled the case with a consent order that forbids the parties from any future attempt to exchange pay information or to agree on the wages to be paid to their staffs.
This was the first FTC wage-fixing enforcement action since the FTC and US Department of Justice (DOJ) issued their joint Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource Professionals in October 2016. That guidance stated that naked wage-fixing and no-poach agreements—e.g., agreements separate from or not reasonably necessary to a larger legitimate collaboration between the employers—are per se illegal under the Sherman Act.
The respondents in the Your Therapy Source case are staffing agencies that allegedly provided therapists such as physical therapists, speech therapists and occupational therapists to home health agencies on a contract basis. The respondents were responsible for recruiting the therapists and paying them a “pay rate” per visit or per patient.
According to the complaint, the alleged unlawful agreement began when one home health agency unilaterally notified Integrity that it was going to reduce the “bill rates” that it paid Integrity for its therapists, thus cutting into Integrity’s profit margins. Integrity’s owner then reached out through one of his therapists to the owner of Your Therapy Source and the two exchanged information about their respective rates paid to therapists. The two firms then reached an agreement via text message to reduce the rates they paid therapists.
Once the respondents had reached the agreement to reduce therapists’ pay, Integrity’s owner allegedly reached out via text to four other competing therapy-staffing agencies to solicit their participation in the agreement.
The FTC’s complaint alleged that this conduct violated Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair and deceptive acts and practices.
WHAT THIS MEANS
Wage-fixing cases have been notable in the health care industry, with prior DOJ enforcement against a hospital buying group and several class actions against health care providers in the 2000s that alleged the fixing of nurses’ pay.
Companies should strictly avoid colluding with other firms on wages, salaries, fringe benefits or other remuneration paid to workers. Companies should also exercise extreme caution in information exchanges regarding wages and benefits, which can lead to improper agreements or result in independent antitrust liability if not properly supervised.
Firms should be mindful of the DOJ/FTC’s joint guidance on information sharing in the health care industry (see link at p. 50), which also provides a useful template for how the US antitrust agencies will analyze information sharing more generally. The joint [...]
On April 27, 2018, the United States Senate confirmed President Trump’s five nominees for Commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Three are Republicans: Chairman Joseph Simons, Noah Phillips and Christine Wilson, and two are Democrats: Rohit Chopra and Rebecca Slaughter. The Senate’s vote returns the FTC to a full complement of Commissioners for the first time under the Trump Administration. Of note to participants in the health care sector: the FTC shares civil antitrust law enforcement jurisdiction over the health care industry with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, but takes the lead when it comes to the health care provider, pharmaceutical and medical device industries. (more…)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently announced that it has challenged a merger between Wilhelmsen Maritime Services (Wilhelmsen) and Drew Marine Group (Drew) because of an overlap in service to “global fleet customers,” a narrow customer segment that purchases marine water treatment chemicals and services.
WHAT HAPPENED:
The FTC issued an administrative complaint and filed a complaint in federal court seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, asserting that Wilhelmsen’s proposed $400 million acquisition of Drew would significantly reduce competition in the market for marine water treatment chemicals and services used by global fleets.
The FTC enforcement action focuses on a narrow sub-segment of customers, global fleet customers, that buys marine water treatment chemicals and services.
The FTC distinguished global fleet customers from other marine water treatment chemical customers on the basis that:
(1) global fleets have specialized needs that only a few suppliers can meet (turn-key global sales, service and delivery capabilities, as well as consistent and reliable product supply); and
(2) these customers seek out suppliers via requests for proposal and direct negotiation and therefore potential suppliers can price discriminate to that subset of customers.
Because of the specific needs of global fleet customers and because global fleet suppliers can identify which customers are seeking service for global fleets, suppliers are able to price discriminate to the global fleet customer set.
The FTC alleged a harm to competition because their investigation showed Wilhelmsen and Drew are each other’s closest competitors based on company documents, statements by the business personnel, and bid data showing that the companies are most frequently the first and second choice for global fleet customers. In addition, the FTC noted that Wilhelmsen and Drew would control at least 60 percent of the market with the next largest competitor having less than a 5 percent share.
The FTC complaint disparaged the remaining market participants as unable to practicably compete with Wilhelmsen and Drew to service global fleets because they are perceived as offering lower quality products with less reliability, having more limited service capabilities, and failing to price competitively.
WHAT THIS MEANS:
The FTC’s enforcement action continues a trend of applying price discrimination markets. These markets are characterized by: (1) buyers with special requirements that only select suppliers can service; and (2) sellers who can identify the buyers with those special requirements and selectively price based upon the knowledge of those special needs.
Antitrust enforcement of price discrimination markets lead to narrower product market definitions. Therefore, applying price discrimination markets may result in antitrust enforcers challenging mergers that appear lawful when viewed as a broader market.
There is increased risk of price discrimination markets being applied by antitrust enforcers in industries in which:
The customers’ end uses differ for the same product;
Merging companies’ documents recognize distinctions among customer groups; and
Groups of customers require unique product characteristics.
Bruce Hoffman, acting director of the Bureau of Competition at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), announced that the FTC will no longer accept divestitures of inhalant and injectable pipeline drugs in pharmaceutical mergers.
Instead, in situations in which the parties to the transaction own both a successfully manufactured inhalant or injectable and an overlapping pipeline inhalant or injectable in a concentrated market, the FTC will seek a divestiture of the manufactured product.
An internal study at the FTC revealed that the rate of failure was “startlingly high” for divestitures of certain complex pipeline pharmaceutical products. Hoffman blamed the high failure rate on the difficulty in actually getting the complex pipeline pharmaceutical to market by a divestiture buyer. He explained that a divestiture buyer, for example, could struggle to reliably manufacture an inhalant or injectable product, frustrating its ability to ultimately bring the product to market.
On February 14, 2017, Integra agreed to purchase Johnson & Johnson’s Codman neurosurgery business (excluding Codman’s neurovascular and drug deliver businesses) for $1.045 billion.
Seven months later, on September 25, 2017, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) agreed to clear the transaction subject to the parties divesting five neurosurgical tools and associated assets including the relevant intellectual property (IP), manufacturing technology and know-how, and research & development (R&D) information related to the five tools. Additionally the buyer of the divested assets can freely negotiate to hire any employees that worked on sales, marketing, manufacturing, or R&D for the divestiture products. The parties must also supply Natus Medical Incorporated (Natus) with cranial access kits often sold with the divestiture assets until Natus can start sourcing them independently.
The FTC required that the parties divest the following medical devices:
Intracranial pressure monitoring systems, which measure pressure inside the skull. The FTC determined that Integra (68 percent) and Codman (26 percent) combined market share in the United States would be 94 percent and that only fringe competitors with limited presence would have remained.
Cerebrospinal fluid collections systems, which drain excess cerebrospinal fluid and monitor pressures within the fluid. The FTC found that Integra (57 percent) and Codman (14 percent) would combine for 71 percent market share in the United States and would have reduced the number of significant competitors from three to two.
Non-antimicrobial external ventricular drainage catheters, which funnel excess cerebrospinal fluid form the brain to cerebrospinal fluid collection systems to relieve intracranial pressure. Here, the FTC said Integra (29 percent) and Codman (17 percent) are the number two and three competitors accounting for 46 percent of the market in the United States and would have reduced the number of significant competitors from three to two.
Fixed pressure valve shunts, which are used to treat excessive accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid. The FTC found that Integra (23 percent) and Codman (15 percent) were the number two and three competitors would control 38 percent of the US market and, again, that the number of competitors would have been reduced from three to two.
Dural grafts, which are used to repair or replace the membrane that surrounds the brain and spinal cord and keep cerebrospinal fluid in place. The FTC determined that the merger would have reduced the number of significant competitors from four to three with Integra (66 percent) and Codman (nine percent) combining for 75 percent market share.
Under the terms of the settlement, the parties must divest within 10 days of closing to Natus, which is a global health care company with an existing neurology business including systems that are complementary to the divestiture assets.
On August 31, 2017, the Attorney General of Washington filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington alleging that two transactions harmed competition for healthcare on the Kitsap Peninsula.
WHAT HAPPENED:
In July 2016, CHI Franciscan Health System (Franciscan) acquired WestSound Orthopedics (WestSound), a physician practice of seven orthopedists based in Silverdale, Washington.
In September 2016, Franciscan entered into a set of agreements which allowed The Doctors Clinic (TDC), a 54 physician multispecialty practice also based in Silverdale, to use Franciscan’s reimbursement rates with payors in exchange for certain ancillary services.
While the publicly stated rationale for the transactions included “enhanced patient access and efficiency,” the Attorney General’s complaint alleged that the “true motivation” for the deals was to “charge higher rates for physician services, and to collectively gain negotiating clout over healthcare payers by removing head-to-head competition.”
The complaint also alleges that the TDC agreements would enable Franciscan to effectively shut down TDC’s facilities providing ancillary surgical, imaging, and laboratory services, and shift these outpatient procedures to Franciscan’s nearby inpatient hospital, where it could charge higher, hospital-based rates for the same services.
WHAT THIS MEANS:
Even without involvement from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), state attorneys general can and do independently challenge transactions they consider anticompetitive and continue to be aggressive in pursuing enforcement actions where health systems either acquire physician practices or use other agreements to charge higher rates for physician and ancillary services
Health systems should consider that even unreportable transactions may trigger a challenge from either the FTC or state attorneys general to unwind them and, if a transaction has been consummated, any profits resulting from an unlawful transaction may be subject to disgorgement.
Since internal emails and documents discussing a transaction, even one that does not meet the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act’s reporting threshold, may eventually surface in an antitrust investigation, this illustrates how “bad documents” can undermine obtaining clearance for a transaction.
NAAB is a non-profit corporation of approximately 24 member businesses that compete to sell dairy cattle semen to US dairy farms for artificial insemination of dairy cows. Together, the NAAB membership accounts for more than 90 percent of sales to US farms.
The new technology, called Genomic Predicted Transmitting Ability (GPTA) was developed by mid-2008.
In late 2008, NAAB implemented rules limiting access to the GPTA technology. Specifically, (1) only a NAAB member could obtain a dairy bull’s GPTA; and (2) the NAAB member obtaining a GPTA must have some ownership interest in the dairy bull.
McDermott’s Antitrust M&A Snapshot is a resource for in-house counsel and others who deal with antitrust M&A issues but are not faced with these issues on a daily basis. In each quarterly issue, we will provide concise summaries of Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Department of Justice (DOJ) and European Commission (EC) news and events related to M&A, including significant ongoing investigations, trials and consent orders, as well as analysis on the trends we see developing in the antitrust review process.
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