1st Circuit Denies Antitrust Liability in Regulatory Petitioning Fight

OneLink isn't liable under the "sham" exception for petitioning the Puerto Rico Telecommunications Regulatory Board and other government officials to deny or impede efforts by Puerto Rico Telephone Co. (PRTC) to get into the IPTV business on the island, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a docket 16-2132 decision Tuesday. Petitioning an agency or executive official as an anticompetitive weapon only falls in the sham exception if the petition is objectively baseless, and PRTC never argued any OneLink petitions were that, so those petitions don't support imposing antitrust liability on OneLink, Judge William Kayatta said. In a concurring opinion, Judges David Barron and Juan Torruella said a monopolist could still be liable under antitrust law for a pattern of petitioning even though no single filing in that pattern is objectively baseless. PRTC outside counsel didn't comment Thursday.