The District Court’s AT&T/Time Warner Decision: Insights into the Law of Vertical Integration

By Christopher S. Yoo – 

The U.S. District Court’s opinion unconditionally approving AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner is often mistakenly regarded as the mere application of settled law to a particular case. A close reading of the decision yields insights in five areas: (1) what constitutes must-have content; (2) the importance of focusing exclusively on merger-specific harms; (3) the importance of showing both the ability and the incentive to harm competition; (4) the increasing