Antitrust

Discover Financial Services, the fourth-biggest U.S. credit card company, settled an antitrust suit in which it sought $18 billion from larger rivals Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. for blocking banks from issuing its cards. The accord came as trial was to begin Tuesday in Manhattan federal court. Terms weren't disclosed, but UBS analyst Adam Frisch in New York wrote that "industry sources" said the case was settled for $2.

South Korea's antitrust regulator said Thursday that it had launched a full-scale investigation into alleged unfair market practices by U.S. wireless technology company Qualcomm Inc. The Fair Trade Commission early last month formed a task force to push forward a probe into allegations that the company used its dominant position in wireless technology to seek excessive royalties, said Shin Yeong-ho, a commission official.

A federal judge has thrown out an antitrust lawsuit filed by the distributor of Morpheus file-sharing software against Internet phone service provider Skype Technologies, EBay Inc. and other defendants. StreamCast Networks Inc. had sought more than $4.1 billion in unspecified damages and a court order blocking EBay from selling Skype services.

Microsoft Corp.'s rivals renewed their call Friday for European Union regulators to act against what they say are illegal practices, alleging that the new Vista operating system is the company's attempt to extend its monopoly to the Internet. They asked the European Commission to make a decision "as fast as possible" on a complaint they filed in February.

The Federal Trade Commission finalized its ruling that Rambus Inc. violated antitrust laws, imposing limits on the royalties the memory chip designer can charge. Wall Street was bracing for a potentially harsher order than the one that the FTC released Monday, and Rambus stock surged 24%.

President Bush promoted his newly released federal budget Tuesday at a company that recently settled a class-action lawsuit over alleged price-fixing and antitrust violations. Bush used his visit to Micron Technology Inc., a semiconductor manufacturer, to argue that Congress should look to private sector companies as examples of responsible budgeting. His spending plan for next year forecasts a balanced federal budget by 2012.

Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday settled a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of thousands of Iowans who bought the company's programs between 1994 and 2006. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The lawsuit sought more than $330 million from Microsoft for allegedly engaging in monopolistic and anti-competitive conduct that caused customers to pay more for software than they would have if there had been competition. Redmond, Wash.

The U.S. Justice Department ordered global steel giant Mittal Steel Co. to sell its Sparrows Point mill near Baltimore to settle antitrust issues raised by the Dutch company's recent merger with Luxembourg-based Arcelor. The proposed consent decree would allow Mittal to keep a Weirton, W.Va., mill that had volunteered to be sold to preserve competition for tin-plated steel, used primarily for food and aerosol cans.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a $79-million antitrust award against lumber producer Weyerhaeuser Co. in a ruling that will help shield companies from claims that they illegally tried to drive a competitor out of business. The justices unanimously said a jury used the wrong standard in concluding that Weyerhaeuser monopolized the Pacific Northwest market for finished alder, a hardwood used in furniture.

The European Union escalated its trans-Atlantic fight with Microsoft Corp. on Thursday, threatening multimillion-dollar fines against the software maker over claims it was asking rivals to pay too much for information that would help their products work with Windows. In response, Microsoft charged that the treatment it received from the EU was unprecedented and harmed Europe's efforts to become a thriving high-tech economy.