Antitrust — price fixing

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U.S. Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Antitrust — price fixing

Where the defendants were only overcharging foreign subsidiaries, the plaintiff’s antitrust action was properly dismissed.

“The Supreme Court has warned that rampant extraterritorial application of U.S. law ‘creates a serious risk of interference with a foreign nation’s ability independently to regulate its own commercial affairs.- F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. v. Empagran S.A., supra, 542 U.S. at 165. The Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act was intended to prevent such ‘unreasonable interference with the sovereign authority of other nations.’ Id. at 164. The position for which Motorola contends would if adopted enormously increase the global reach of the Sherman Act, creating friction with many foreign countries and ‘resent[ment at] the apparent effort of the United States to act as the world’s competition police officer,’ a primary concern motivating the foreign trade act. United Phosphorus, Ltd. v. Angus Chemical Co., 322 F.3d 942, 960–62 (7th Cir. 2003) (en banc) (dissenting opinion), overruled on other grounds by Minn-Chem, Inc. v. Agrium, Inc., supra. It is a concern to which Motorola is oblivious.”

Affirmed.

14-8003 Motorola Mobility, LLC, v. AU Optronics Corp.

Petition for Leave to Take an Interlocutory Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Gottschall, J., Posner, J.