Appeals Court Dismisses Meta Antitrust Case

An appeals court on Thursday ruled in favor of Meta in an antitrust case brought against Facebook’s parent company by dozens of state attorneys general who alleged Meta had illegally maintained monopoly power in the social networking market by acquiring Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, reported The Hill.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said the lawsuit is “not only odd, but old.” The suit, it added, “concerns an industry that, even on the States’ allegations, has had rapid growth and innovation with no end in sight.”

As “sovereigns,” the court said, states aren’t able to argue for an injunction under antitrust laws, because to be entitled to do so, they must be a “person, firm, corporation or association.”

“We note in particular that courts should proceed cautiously when asked to deem novel products or practices anticompetitive. Many innovations may seem anti-competitive at first but turn out to be the opposite, and the market often corrects even those that are anti-competitive,” the Thursday appeals decision stated. 

The AGs first sued Meta in December 2020 but a federal court dismissed their case in 2021, with U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg at the time ruling that they had waited too long to challenge the acquisitions and that the policies they cited were not illegal under antitrust law.

A Meta spokesperson said the case “fundamentally mischaracterized the vibrant competitive ecosystem in which we operate.

“In affirming the dismissal of this case, the court noted that this enforcement action was ‘odd’ because we compete in an industry that is experiencing ‘rapid growth and innovation with no end in sight.’ Moving forward, Meta will defend itself vigorously against the FTC’s distortion of antitrust laws and attacks on an American success story that are contrary to the interests of people and businesses who value our services,” Meta added.

Meta is still facing a challenge from the Federal Trade Commission, which in 2020 asked a court to force it to sell subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp, saying the social media company used a “buy or bury” strategy to snap up rivals and keep smaller competitors at bay.