Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) scored a legal victory after a federal court dismissed the antitrust complaints filed against it by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and a coalition of states.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington D.C. granted the social network giant’s request to dismiss the lawsuits. The judge’s decision is a major blow to the federal consumer watchdog and the coalition of states led by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
In the antitrust complaints filed in December last year, the FTC and the coalition of states alleged that Facebook engaged in anticompetitive business practices. Facebook allegedly eliminated threats to its monopoly power in the Personal Social Networking (PSN) Services market by acquiring its smaller rivals including Instagram and WhatsApp and imposing anticompetitive conditions on software developers.
The FTC and the states argued that the social network giant violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits anti-competitive or monopolistic business practices.
