FTC, Justice Officials Defend Their Collaboration on Antitrust Cases

"The cooperation between the FTC and the DOJ is quite good,” Baer said. “There is a close case coordination,” and the two agencies have worked well together, including on most favored nation issues and “tough [intellectual property] issues involving patent assertion” entities, he said. “I think the relationship is good, and it’s only going to get better,” he said. He and Ramirez “have been friends since the day she came on the commission,” and the two “have talked a lot in the last couple of weeks,” since Ramirez became chairman, Baer said.

Ramirez pointed to a workshop the two agencies held last year on patent assertion entities “and the impact they may be having on competition” as an example of interagency collaboration. Work like this will continue under her leadership, she said. “The FTC has been using its enforcement authority and continuing a long tradition of focus on standard setting.” DOJ and FTC’s level of cooperation has been called low by critics including William Kovacic, a former chairman of the commission.

Under Ramirez, the FTC will continue pursuing online privacy issues related to consumer welfare, including “actively enforcing” the agency’s updated Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act rule, which will go into effect in July, she said. The agency is “going to be continuing to pay greater attention to privacy ramifications in the mobile arena,” including mobile data security, she said. The commission will also focus on data brokers, which Ramirez described as companies that cull and then resell data about individuals from online sources, including information that is publicly available. This data collection happens “most often without consumers having any idea that it’s going on,” she said. Ramirez said the FTC will have completed a report on the data broker industry by the end of the year.

Ramirez said the FTC has been dealing with “budgetary issues … for some years now.” The agency has handled these issues by “looking very closely over the last one to two years at hiring,” encouraging some employees to retire early and “taking a deep look at discretionary spending.” That the agency has limited resources “has not had a significant impact on our ability to do our core work, but I do think this is an issue going forward that will continue to be with us, and my hope is that Congress will work with us to ensure that we can continue to protect American consumers,” she said.

Justice will have to allocate its resources wisely in the face of sequestration, Baer said. “Our effort has got to be, with limited taxpayer dollars available to us, to focus on behavior that causes the most significant consumer injury,” he said. Baer said he hopes to avoid issuing “GINOS,” or “Guidelines in Name Only,” while at the Antitrust Division. The agency can “offer guidance in many ways,” including weighing in on pending court cases, making public comments and issuing “explanations of why you chose not to go forward in a particular area,” he said.

Baer said February’s settlement between Justice and Macmillan over alleged price collusion in the e-book market has been successful. Consumers have seen lower prices on e-books, he said. Prices “have fallen. They have really fallen,” he continued. More generally, the department’s handling of the case “shows a willingness to go to court when we need to,” he said.