The U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s defeat as it sought to block Microsoft Corp.’s acquisition of videogame maker Activision Blizzard is yet another setback for an increasingly toothless regulator that needs to pick better battles with Big Tech.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s defeat as it sought to block Microsoft Corp.’s acquisition of videogame maker Activision Blizzard is yet another setback for an increasingly toothless regulator that needs to pick better battles with Big Tech.
Yeah, I don’t know if the issue is the FTC’s choice of battles. I think Europe’s success is due to a system that is less beholden to big corporations. FTC’s failure is due to a failure within the American government.
The judge for the Microsoft vs. FTC legal battle made a decision based on the idea that 10 years is a long time… To me, this is a comical statement. 10 years is a blink of an eye. What do we think is gonna happen once ten years has passed?
Agreed. Anti-trust law has been whittled away at for generations. FTC cannot do anything about that.
Even the idea of picking their battles will quickly become a damned if they do, damned if they don’t scenario. If they only go after the safer cases, they’ll let through a ton of big mergers/acquisitions, which in turn will signal that those cases are OK.
The IP that goes into Warcraft 3 and thus into WoW is older than 20 years. I mean Warcraft III celebrated 20 years this July. Even WoW itself will become 20 y.o. next year. The first Call of Duty was released nearly 20 years ago too! In October 2003. Nearly all games witch dominate the market have old IP. 10 years is nothing.
PS. I forgot Diablo, 27 years old IP.