While Microsoft has won pretty much every battle so far in its legal clash against the FTC over the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, this protracted war in court isn’t over just yet.
The acquisition was consummated in late 2023 after Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley of the United States District Court, Northern District of California, ruled against a preliminary injunction requested by the Federal Trade Commission, while on the other side of the ocean, Microsoft negotiated a deal with the British CMA.
A few days ago, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the FTC’s appeal against Judge Scott Corley’s decision, defeating another of the regulator’s attempts to throw a wrench in Microsoft’s works.
Yet, this saga seems to be destined to see more chapters, as the FTC still has a proceeding against the acquisition going on in its own Administrative Law court.
The first evidentiary hearing of this new trial was supposed to happen on May 28, 2025, three weeks after the decision of the Court of Appeals.
Yet, a few days ago, Microsoft and the FTC jointly filed a motion to delay the beginning of the proceeding with the first evidentiary hearing to avoid unnecessarily burdening the parties and the other companies that will participate with a compressed pretrial schedule.
Today, the motion has been granted, and the commission issued an order with a new start date. The evidentiary hearing will happen at commence at 10:00 a.m. on July 21, 2025.
Some expected the FTC to withdraw its complaint, considering the repeated defeats in court and the fact that this whole kerfuffle was started under the leadership of former Chair Lina Khan, who resigned in January 2025 following the election of current US President Donald Trump.
Yet, it appears that, at least for now, the Commission isn’t showing signs of wanting to call it quits. No white flag has been hoisted over the Federal Trade Commission Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC.
Of course, there are now exactly two months before the administrative trial starts, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
It’s worth mentioning that, at this point, the legal standards the FTC would have to meet to manage to dissolve the acquisition are likely extremely demanding, so the Commission will have to face a steep uphill battle if it still intends to fight.
