FTC appeals to block already completed Microsoft-Activision merger

The Federal Trade Commission has filed an appeal to block the already-completed merger between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard.

The new appeal (via Reuters) reports lawyers from both the FTC and Microsoft appeared before a three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals.

In the new appeal, the FTC argued that district judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, who denied the federal regulator’s appeal for an injunction last summer, was holding the FTC to a much higher standard.

The FTC lawyer, Imad Abyad, argued the federal body only had to show the possibility of Microsoft restricting games from other platforms, and not make a case that the deal was anticompetitive.

This was the argument made in their original lawsuit, and Abyad noted Microsoft has done this in the recent past after they acquired Zenimax – by making some games exclusive to Microsoft platforms.

“I fail to understand how giving somebody a monopoly of something would be pro-competitive,” Abyad argued (via CNN). “It may be a benefit to some class of consumers, but that is very different than saying it is pro-competitive.”

Kilaru, the Microsoft lawyer, said the original ruling by Corley presented “clear factual findings” and remarked that “the world will be better with the merger.” He also noted the standard can’t be “as low as the FTC is suggesting” and can’t be a tiny bit of evidence.

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