Law360's Pro Say - News & Analysis on Law and the Legal Industry · Law360 - Legal News & Analysis

Google’s Antitrust Woes Linger With An Epic Defeat

·38 min·2 clips

A California jury found Google’s Play Store acted as an illegal monopoly and a judge can infer deleted chats mattered.

1. Law360’s Pro Say covers the Supreme Court fight over Mifepristone and Epic Games’ antitrust verdict against Google. 2. Amber McKinney hosts with Alex Lawson and Haley Gaddaf, and each of them frames the legal developments for a Law360 audience. 3. The episode asks what the Supreme Court’s Mifepristone review and Google’s Play Store loss mean for abortion access and app-store competition. 4. The Mifepristone discussion starts with the Supreme Court agreeing to hear a dispute over a lower court order blocking the FDA’s decades-old approval. 5. Alex Lawson says anti-abortion groups filed cases after Dobbs and that Mifepristone has been approved for 23 years. 6. The hosts note that the FDA, the drug’s distributor, and an anti-abortion group all petitioned the Supreme Court. 7. Amber McKinney quotes the lower court’s language that Mifepristone was “ultimately starves the unborn human until death.” 8. The Fifth Circuit is described as overturning part of the ruling while keeping some pre-2016 access restrictions in place. 9. The FDA calls the appellate result an “unprecedented and profoundly disruptive” outcome. 10. Haley Gaddaf says medical abortion is now the most common method of terminating pregnancies in the United States. 11. She also notes that healthcare providers and pharmaceutical industry voices warned the ruling could undermine the FDA’s regulatory process beyond abortion drugs. 12. The Supreme Court’s decision to hear two consolidated cases, while declining a related challenge to the initial approval, narrows the merits question. 13. Amber McKinney says that narrowing is a “good sign” for advocates seeking broad access to the drug. 14. The Google segment shifts to Epic Games’ 2020 lawsuit over the Play Store. 15. The hosts explain that Epic cut Google out of in-app purchase revenue and then Google removed Epic from the platform. 16. Alex Lawson says Google tied app-store access to its billing service and charged commission fees as high as 30%. 17. The trial is described as lasting about a month, with the jury deliberating for only about four hours before finding for Epic on all counts. 18. Amber McKinney says a Google CEO admitted the company deletes texts and internal messages, and the judge told jurors to infer the deleted chats were unfavorable to Google. 19. The episode keeps a conversational, news-heavy pace with a recurring back-and-forth among the three hosts and a few jokes about themes and calendars. 20. Listeners following Supreme Court, antitrust, or legal-industry coverage will get the most value, while people avoiding abortion and tech litigation may skip it.

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