Microsoft Activision Deal Accelerating In Light Of UK Appeal, FTC TRO

There’s a lot to catch up on in regards to the Microsoft Activision deal’s progress in the UK and especially the US. As counterintuitive as it is, this may all lead to the deal getting finalized sooner rather than later.

First, we’ll discuss what has happened. Patents expert Florian Mueller attended part of the 2^nd case management conference with the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal, which finished quite rapidly. The tribunal has scheduled the appeal case to be held in late July, and is expected to last something between four to six days. Microsoft proposed the start date of July 28, 2023, but that has not been decided yet.

Before this business ended, however, the FTC made their own move and filed both a preliminary injunction and a temporary restraining order to stop the Microsoft – Activision deal from going through. This is now the third case filed in the US to block the deal, but surprisingly enough Microsoft’s response has been – positive?
 Yes, believe it or not, Microsoft president Brad Smith shared this response to the report on the new legal actions by the FTC:

“Today’s action by the FTC to file suit in our Activision case in federal court should accelerate the decision-making process. This benefits everyone. We always prefer constructive and amicable paths with governments but have confidence in our case and look forward to presenting it.”

Now, let’s go back a bit so that there’s no confusion. The first US case filed vs the Microsoft Activision deal also comes from the FTC, and is being heard in FTC court under Judge Michael Chappel.

The second US case vs the deal is the one filed in a San Francisco, California federal court. This is the one popularly dubbed the ‘gamer’s lawsuit’, and it has already been dismissed by the judge for lack of a case. They have since filed again.

This third case is from the FTC, and is also a federal case filed in San Francisco, California. What distinguishes this from the other cases is that this suit comes with that injunction and restraining order.

So, after all that, you may be wondering, why is Microsoft happy to now be facing three US cases?

If you have been following this story closely, you may already have an idea of what’s going on. As Brad Smith stated succinctly, Microsoft is confident they will defeat this new FTC case in federal court.

And once they do get that decision in their favor, it will ‘accelerate’ the other cases in the US, as the other courts will now be hard pressed to reject Microsoft’s arguments.

It may help Microsoft in the UK as well, but given the sequence of events in that country, it seemed that Microsoft was on their way to get their way there as well.

Ironically, as Florian points out, all these actions were intended to stop the deal from being closed by July 18. As many insiders have pointed out, however, Microsoft was already making plans to close the deal before all these cases were finalized.

While there was a lot of FUD about whether Microsoft can get over all these roadblocks, as  we now know, the arguments being used to block the case are weak, and fly in the face of the real interests of the countries and regions the regulators are supposed to protect. It won’t be happening tomorrow, but every new development only makes it seem that the deal is more and more likely to consummate.