US FEDERAL Trade Commission (FTC) chair Lina Khan has staked her reputation on offering a novel view of antitrust policy, one that looks beyond markets as they exist today and instead considers what competitive advantages any merger might create in the years and decades ahead.

But once again, in front of the courts, those arguments have fallen flat. On Tuesday (Jul 11), a federal judge in California refused to block Microsoft’s US$69 billion deal to buy video game publisher Activision Blizzard, owner of Candy Crush and the bestselling Call of Duty series.

The Microsoft-Activision case is the latest in a list of recent legal setbacks for the antitrust watchdog, including an unsuccessful attempt to block Facebook parent Meta Platforms from acquiring a virtual-reality startup.