Annual Antitrust CLE Event – 2025

Troutman Pepper Locke is excited to invite you to our Annual Antitrust CLE event, where U.S. and international presenters will offer an in-depth look at significant antitrust developments and provide practical guidance to help you minimize and manage risks.

The event will feature five panels (4.5 hours substantive and 1 hour ethics). The panels will encourage audience participation and engagement with our distinguished group of presenters. Panelists will cover current U.S. and international merger and non-merger enforcement in the current administration and recent case law. The discussions will address the heightened antitrust risks of artificial intelligence, participation in industry groups, worker non-compete restrictions, and the more non-traditional antitrust theories of harm, including how state and federal concerns related to ESG and free speech impact antitrust risks. We will end the session with a panel on ethics.

AGENDA

8:00 a.m. Registration and Breakfast

8:30 a.m. Opening Remarks

8:35 a.m. Today’s Hot Topics

This fast-paced discussion will cover a variety of topics at the frontier of antitrust developments:

• Monopoly broth continues to heat up. What will be decided by the Supreme Court and how to counsel clients a group of lawful acts can add up to an antitrust violation?
• Right to Repair: How will the right to repair movement impact antitrust?
• State laws aimed at strengthening competition or lowering prices raise interesting questions about how companies can safely operate and the goals and application of the antitrust laws.
• Compliance in light of the current administration’s position on worker non-competes.

9:40 a.m. Antitrust Conspiracies and How to Avoid Them

Algorithms, predictive pricing, and industry groups are an important part of doing business. This discussion will focus on criminal and civil antitrust issues arising from participation in trade associations and industry groups or the use of algorithms and AI.

11:00 a.m. International Competition & Trade

The world does not standstill and neither do the competition and trade laws. We will discuss the developing antitrust and national security or trade regulation enforcement trends and how to navigate those trends when considering your transaction opportunities.

12:30 p.m. Networking Lunch

1:10 p.m. Innovation, Intellectual Property & Antitrust

One of the key goals of the antitrust is to foster innovation. This panel will look at innovation in several ways, including the current administration’s positions at the intersection of intellectual property and antitrust laws, recent innovative use of the antitrust laws to restrict environmental and sustainability efforts, and what the recent Department of Justice, Antitrust Division’s recent Big Tech trials mean for antitrust and innovation moving forward.

2:15 p.m. Ethical Pitfalls in Large Antitrust Cases

The discussion will include many ethics-related topics that arise in antitrust litigation, including regarding internal investigations, joint defense, counsel representing the interests of class representatives and class members, communications with members of a putative class, and issues that arise in the course of settlement negotiations