Antitrust experts available on DOJ lawsuit against Google

Northwestern University antitrust experts from the Kellogg School of Management and Northwestern Pritzker School of Law are available to comment on this morning’s announcement by the Department of Justice to sue Google for anti-competitive practices.

Mark McCareins is a clinical professor of business law at the Kellogg School of Management where he teaches courses on antitrust and competition. He also practiced law as a senior partner in the international law firm of Winston and Strawn LLP for 33 years before retiring where he was co-chair of the firm's global competition practice.

Quote from Professor McCareins
“The legal standards that will govern the disposition of the lawsuit under Section 2 of the federal Sherman Act are not novel; first the government will carry the burden of proof to establish its relevant product contention that ‘search advertising,’ ‘general search text advertising’ are relevant markets along with something they call a ‘general search services market.’ If the DOJ cannot carry its burden of proof on at least one of those markets, then the government will not prevail.

“Assuming the DOJ can carry its market definition burden, it next must establish that certain of Google’s practices (e.g. exclusive distribution agreements) are ‘exclusionary’ under Section 2 of the Sherman Act.” He can be reached by contacting Molly Lynch at 773-505-9719 or molly@lynchgrouponline.com

John McGinnis is the George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law at Northwestern Law. His areas of expertise include constitutional law, international law and antitrust law. He is the author of “Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology” (Princeton 2013) and “Originalism and the Good Constitution” (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He can be reached at j-mcginnis@law.northwestern.edu.