Market Intelligence

A McDonald's customer has filed a proposed nationwide class action alleging that the company's AI-enhanced menu pricing tool constitutes algorithmic price-fixing, marking the latest challenge to AI-enabled pricing systems. The lawsuit claims McDonald's pressures franchisees to use a tool that draws on competitors' non-public sales data to recommend prices, raising questions about whether such platforms can facilitate unlawful agreements. This case arrives as DOJ, state attorneys general, and private plainti

A federal district court dismissed Michigan's antitrust lawsuit against major energy companies and the American Petroleum Institute, which alleged a decades-long conspiracy to suppress renewable energy competition. The court found that the state failed to establish the requisite antitrust standing, determining that the causal chain between the alleged conspiracy and claimed injuries was too attenuated and that Michigan's residents were predominantly indirect purchasers under the Illinois Brick doctrine.

A federal court dismissed antitrust claims against major concrete and cement additives manufacturers, ruling that plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a plausible conspiracy to fix prices in the United States. The decision clarifies the stringent requirements for alleging foreign-origin price-fixing conspiracies under U.S. antitrust law, particularly regarding the need for direct evidence of domestic conspiratorial conduct and parallel pricing behavior among U.S. defendants.

Global antitrust and competition law developments from September 2026 reveal significant enforcement actions across multiple jurisdictions, including U.S. litigation over price-fixing in medical school applications and frozen potato markets, FTC investigations into healthcare mergers and pesticide loyalty programs, and international regulatory activity spanning Mexico's soccer industry, European digital markets, and Japanese price cartel warnings amid inflation.

Companies in the chemicals and metals industries face divergent antitrust risks when pursuing collaborative ESG initiatives across the Atlantic. While US enforcers scrutinize sustainability agreements that may affect prices or output, the European Union has adopted a more permissive framework that recognizes many sustainability collaborations fall outside cartel prohibitions.

California's new COMPETE Act fundamentally transforms state antitrust enforcement by allowing prosecutors to target single dominant firms for monopolistic conduct. With $14.3 million in new funding...