Legal News

Apple, Once the Scrappy Outsider, Beefs Up Its Antitrust Team

By Thomas Catan

WASHINGTON- For years, Apple relished its reputation as a scrappy outsider, fighting to stay alive in a world dominated by Microsoft Corp.'s Windows monopoly. But a quiet recent hire by the Cupertino company suggests it realizes how much that picture has changed.

A few months ago, Apple hired Kyle Andeer, a top former litigator at the Federal Trade Commission, to be its first in-house antitrust counsel. The hire wasn't publicly announced at the time and has gone largely unnoticed.

Andeer will likely have his hands full: Apple is facing a proliferating number of antitrust investigations by both the FTC and U.S. Justice Department.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month  that both the FTC and Justice Department are interested in looking at Apple's recently-announced media subscription service, to see if it runs afoul of antitrust laws. The two agencies must now decide which one of them will take the lead.

An Apple spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment.

Andeer should have a very good sense of the FTC's thinking on Apple. He was an Attorney Advisor to FTC Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch, one of the strongest advocates of tough antitrust enforcement at the agency and someone with a long interest in tech issues.

Andeer was also a leading figure behind the FTC's antitrust case against Intel Corp., which resulted in a legal settlement last fall. (Intel's former general counsel Bruce Sewell – who presumably knows a thing or two about defending antitrust cases – also went to Apple in 2009.)

Even before his hiring, Andeer had connections in both camps. Before his stint at the FTC, he worked at the San Francisco office of Latham & Watkins with Daniel Wall, an attorney who has long advised Apple on antitrust matters. (Commissioner Rosch was Wall's former law partner at Latham, completing the circle.)

Oh, and Andeer was also a litigator at the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, should that agency end up taking the lead.

So, he's not much of an outsider, either.

Yukari Iwatani Kane contributed to this post.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 24, 2011 (boomark / email).