Motorola's follow-up filing for Antitrust against cartels for price-fixing schemes heads to Supreme court

Motorola Mobility filed a follow-on civil antitrust suit later last month, asking for a settlement of a circuit split with a price of 3.5 billion dollar from a price-fixing scheme over cellphone displays against AU Optronics and other members of the Asian cartel of electronics.

The issue leads on as subsidiaries of Motorola outside US cannot gain benefits with the country's antitrust laws.

It will be determined this month if the Supreme Court will take up the case. It has been since decades when issues with the nature and cause of the antitrust laws are being challenged by globally-working corporations with branches outside US.

While Motorola said that there is a major issue in lower court's rulings, saying that the Seventh Circuit's dismissal last year contradicts with another court's decision on a related case shows how vaguely they take up antitrust issues. They said that only the high court can clarify what the law means.

But the amount of award asked by the corporation is relatively high. And as said by Judge Richard Posner, the problem with Motorola was how they set up its corporate arrangements. He said that only 1 percent of the panels for the screens were shipped directly to Motorola in the US to use in US-marketed cellphones. And 42 percent of them were shipped on its subsidiaries, particularly in China and Singapore, for cellphones to be sold in the US market. The remaining 57 percent were shipped on other foreign subsidiaries for cellphones to be sold outside US.

While Motorola asserted that they operate as a "single enterprise" with products working globally, Posner said that their foreign market isn't protected by all American laws.

Posner said that "Motorola thinks US antitrust remedies more fearsome than those available to its foreign subsidiaries under foreign laws".

He added that the company cannot bring a civil antitrust suit in the US, even though many Motorola cellphones with price-fixed screens were sold in the US market and the Justice Department had a strong criminal case.

Motorola then argues against the judge. Thomas C. Goldstein, counsel for Motorola, said that he "got it wrong, and this is a superimportant issue."

Some experts also question Posner's ruling. Harry first, a professor at the New York University School of Law stated that the ruling is "bizarre".

Eleanor M. Fox, First's colleague, said that it would be a declining course for global antitrust enforcement, and it would open for more space for global cartels.

However, Herbert Hovenkamp of the University of Iowa College of Law, said that the cases were rightly decided. He said that corporations themselves must adapt to change in technology and modernization.