The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said a lower court judge erred in dismissing the complaint alleging violations of the federal Sherman Act in October 2008.

Among the named defendants in the case are Bertelsmann AG, EMI Group, Sony Corp, Time Warner Inc, Vivendi SA and Warner Music Group Corp or various affiliates.

The plaintiffs contended that record labels entered into joint ventures and licenses that had the effect of creating artificial price floors for downloaded music.

They also said that when competitors started to distribute the labels' music, the defendants "agreed" to a wholesale floor of about 70 cents per song, which were enforced in part through restrictive license agreements.

Writing for a three-judge panel, Circuit Judge Robert Katzmann said the plaintiffs' allegations are "sufficient to plausibly suggest" a conspiracy to fix prices.

Noting that the defendants control more than 80 percent of digital music sold to U.S. purchasers, the judge pointed to one commentator who concluded that "nobody in their right mind" would want to use two of the music services at issue.

He said this suggested "some form of agreement among defendants would have been needed to render the enterprises profitable."

An appeals court is ordering Microsoft Corp. to pay $5.6 million to a national law firm involved in a Wisconsin antitrust case against the software giant.

Zelle, Hofmann, Voelbel & Mason LLP represented consumers who bought Microsoft equipment in Wisconsin. A 2007 settlement required Microsoft to give customers vouchers up to $23 plus millions in technology reimbursements for public schools.

Microsoft claimed the firm should not receive any fees because its attorneys misrepresented hours they claimed to have worked. The firm denied that charge.

The District 1 Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld a lower court ruling that Microsoft must pay $4.2 million in fees for the original litigation, plus another $1.4 million for the subsequent fee dispute.

Two of the three U.S. credit- reporting companies, TransUnion LLC and Experian PLC, won a court bid to dismiss antitrust claims filed by credit-score provider Fair Isaac Corp.

U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery in Minneapolis granted a motion July 24 to throw out Fair Isaac’s claims that TransUnion and Experian, along with Equifax Inc., tried to monopolize the credit-scoring market when they formed a joint venture and announced the VantageScore credit-reporting model in 2006.

The suit claimed the bureaus tried to use VantageScore to eliminate Fair Isaac’s FICO score, which it licenses to the three credit-reporting companies. Equifax settled the case on undisclosed terms in 2008.

In the decision, Montgomery also dismissed Fair Isaac’s contract and false advertising claims against TransUnion and Experian. She declined a request to dismiss claims the two credit-reporting companies violated Fair Isaac’s trademarks.

In a statement Monday, Fair Isaac, which now calls itself FICO, said it believes that “VantageScore remains an illegal presence in the market” and plans to appeal Monday’s decision after a trial on the remaining claims in the case.

Football may be the nation's most popular sport, but baseball is the favored game with the Supreme Court, which gave the national pastime an exemption from antitrust laws in 1922.

Thirty-five years later, the court refused to grant one to the National Football League, saying, essentially, that the court muffed that first call but that it was up to Congress to reverse it.

Now, the NFL is back before the high court, hoping to get at least some relief from what it says are frivolous antitrust lawsuits. The case centers on a challenge to the league's exclusive headwear merchandise contract with Reebok, but the league is hoping for a more sweeping ruling, should the court take the case.

Baseball's exemption is so old it was granted when the sport was still often spelled as two words, in a case called Federal Base Ball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs. In a lawsuit, the Baltimore franchise of the old Federal League, by then defunct, claimed that the 16 teams in the National League and American League violated antitrust laws by purchasing or otherwise inducing Federal League teams to leave the league.

But the court ruled unanimously that baseball wasn't covered by federal antitrust law.

"The business is giving exhibitions of base ball, which are purely state affairs," wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the court's decision.

In 1953, the court upheld the decision, and in denying football an exemption four years later, elaborated on that 1953 ruling: "The court did this because it was concluded that more harm would be done in overruling Federal Base Ball than in upholding a ruling which, at best, was of dubious validity."

Rambus Inc. said Thursday that the Federal Trade Commission has dropped its claim that the memory chip company violated antitrust laws in patenting technologies that were eventually incorporated into industry standards.

The company's shares jumped 14 percent in trading Thursday.

Rambus has fought several legal battles over chip patents, which generate most of its revenue. Chip manufacturers forced to pay royalties to Rambus have accused the company of quietly seeking rights to memory chip technology in the early 1990s even as it participated in an industry standards-setting body, thereby profiting from the body's decisions.

Los Altos, Calif.-based Rambus has consistently denied wrongdoing. The company's general counsel, Thomas Lavelle, said in a statement Thursday, "We are pleased to have finally put this matter behind us."

The FTC ruled in 2006 that Rambus had violated antitrust laws. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned the decision in 2008 and sent the case back to the FTC, saying the agency had not come up with enough evidence to prove that Rambus had sought a monopoly or hurt competition.

"While we remain disappointed by the decision of the Court of Appeals, we of course respect the court's opinion and will move forward," Richard Feinstein, who head's the FTC's competition bureau, said in a statement Thursday.

Rambus won a related case in 2008 when a federal jury in San Jose, Calif., cleared the company of antitrust charges brought in a lawsuit by chip makers Micron Technology Inc. of Boise, Idaho, Hynix Semiconductor Inc. of Icheon, South Korea, and Nanya Technology Corp. of Kueishan, Taiwan.

Like the FTC, those companies charged Rambus with deliberately withholding information from the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council, or JEDEC, which counted Rambus as a member as it established guidelines for the computer memory industry.

A federal judge affirmed the jury's decision this March, saying Rambus had no clear obligation to disclose pending or future patent applications while it held a spot on the council.

Three electronics firms have agreed to plead guilty and pay $585 million in fines for conspiring to drive up prices for people buying computers, TVs and other LCD screens.

In a plea deal filed Wednesday, LG Display Co. Ltd., Sharp Corp., and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd., agreed to cooperate in an antitrust investigation being run by the Justice Department.

The plea agreement was filed in federal court in San Francisco.

LCDs, or liquid crystal display monitors, are the glass display screens on most laptop computers, cell phones and new TVs.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Scott D. Hammond said the scheme cost not only consumers, but also retailers including Apple, Dell and Motorola.

Hammond did not have a cost value for the losses, and said the investigation is continuing.

"These price-fixing conspiracies affected millions of American consumers who use computers, cell phones and numerous other household electronics every day," Hammond told reporters at a Justice Department briefing announcing the deal. "By conspiring to drive up the price of LCD panels, consumers were forced to pay more for these products. And consumers were not the only ones affected by these conspiracies."

Microsoft says it doesn't expect any regulatory roadblocks to prevent it from swallowing Yahoo!. But some legal experts predict the proposed merger might nt be the cakewalk Microsoft expects. At the very least, the $45 billion deal's massive size, its complexity and its impact on various markets mean it is not likely to get a rubber stamp from government regulators.

"As a rule of thumb, a merger that reduces the number of players from 3 to 2 is going to get challenged unless there's some good reason for why it helps competition," says one antitrust attorney, speaking anonymously because he wasn't sure if his firm represents any of the companies.

Microsoft's good reason comes down to one word: Google. The online search advertising market is so dominated by Google, that Microsoft says joining forces may be the only way to increase competition in such an important market.

And Microsoft won't have any trouble finding statistical data to make its case.

According to Nielsen Online, Google garnered 56.3% of all online searches in the month of December. By contrast, Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN network, attracted 17.7% and 13.8% of searches in December, respectively.

"The industry will be well served by having more than one strong player, offering more value and real choice to advertisers, publishers and consumers," said Microsoft Platform and Service Division President Kevin Johnson in a statement announcing the merger proposal.

Nonetheless, a move from three players to two will result in more market concentration, and that can raise flags with regulators.