September 24, 2019
Publication: Law360
Kobre & Kim’s Benjamin Sirota spoke with Law360 regarding the potential effects of major investigations being launched at the state, federal, congressional and international level against Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon. “It’s quite difficult right now to know where all of this is going to go,” Mr. Sirota explained.
The fact that the FTC and DOJ are both pursuing overlapping investigations has also drawn mixed reactions from lawmakers. Mr. Sirota noted that if the investigations continue to diverge into one or more cases, the greatest financial risk to the companies may come afterward. He furthered that successful claims against a tech company may inspire private antitrust attorneys to pursue follow-on litigation, which he described as a “snowball kind of effect.”
When discussing the idea of whether or not one enforcer could pursue multiple cases against the tech companies, the point was made that it would be difficult and could potentially lead to a wide assortment of divergent enforcement. Mr. Sirota extrapolated by saying, “the specific conduct that would be investigated, and what any specific remedies might be, could be very different.”