Industries
The Alioto Law Firm represents businesses small, medium and large including manufacturers, distributors, retailers, jobbers, unions; farmers from livestock to grain to vegetables and fruit; innovators and inventors, consumers and individuals.Below are some examples of industries we frequently represent. Each has its own economic structure, regulatory architecture, and customary trade practice. We have a broad and extensive knowledge of over 80 different industries. We will invest the time required to know yours intimately.Although the industries change, the conduct does not.
Full Industry Index
Over the course of his career, Joseph M. Alioto has tried cases and advised clients across a remarkable breadth of markets. The list below reflects industries in which the firm has substantive litigation, trial, or counseling experience — from heavy industry and agriculture to media, finance, technology, and professional sports.
Practice Areas
01
Platform monopolization claims modeled on the Google Search and Meta cases, app-store commission and anti-steering restraints (Epic v. Apple), self-preferencing by dominant marketplaces, standard-essential patent hold-up and FRAND disputes, no-poach and wage-suppression agreements among tech employers, digital-advertising auction manipulation, and component-cartel matters such as DRAM, LCD, capacitor, and lithium-ion battery price-fixing.
02
Airline merger challenges (JetBlue–Spirit, American–US Airways), capacity-discipline and fuel-surcharge price-fixing conspiracies, ocean shipping alliance rate-setting under the Shipping Act, freight forwarder and rail-rate cartels, and rideshare driver-classification and pricing-algorithm cases. Antitrust scrutiny extends to slot allocation at congested airports, code-share arrangements, and loyalty-program tying.
03
League-imposed restraints on player mobility, franchise relocation, and territorial exclusivity raise core Sherman Act questions. Representative matters include challenges to broadcast and streaming rights pooling, salary-cap and draft restrictions tested against the non-statutory labor exemption, NCAA name-image-likeness restraints after Alston, single-entity defenses under American Needle, and exclusive-dealing claims involving apparel, ticketing, and sports-data providers.
04
Resale price maintenance and minimum-advertised-price programs under Leegin, exclusive dealing and category-captain arrangements with major retailers, indirect-purchaser class actions under Illinois Brick repealer states, private-label tying, and horizontal price-fixing among manufacturers of staples (canned tuna, packaged seafood, chocolate, generic drugs). Recent matters also target algorithmic pricing tools that facilitate tacit collusion.
05
Pharmaceutical reverse-payment (pay-for-delay) settlements under Actavis, product-hopping and citizen-petition abuse, hospital and physician-group consolidation challenged by FTC and state AGs, PBM rebate-walls and formulary exclusion, medical-device tying and bundled rebates, GPO sole-source arrangements, and biosimilar entry-blocking. Insulin and EpiPen pricing litigation illustrates the multi-defendant supply-chain theory.
06
OPEC+ coordination and downstream price-fixing among refiners (as alleged in the D'Augusta gasoline litigation), pipeline and LNG terminal access denials, electricity capacity-market manipulation under FERC, oilfield-services no-poach agreements, midstream gathering monopolies, and renewable-credit and REC market collusion. Sherman Act monopolization theories increasingly target vertically integrated utilities and grid operators.
07
Benchmark manipulation (LIBOR, ISDAfix, FX, Treasury auctions), interchange-fee and merchant-restraint litigation against Visa and Mastercard, stock-loan and CDS market boycotts, prime-brokerage exclusive dealing, credit-card network merger challenges (Capital One–Discover), and HFT order-routing claims. Antitrust overlay extends to ratings-agency conduct and consortium-owned trading venues.
08
Broiler-chicken, pork, beef, and turkey processor price-fixing under the Sherman Act and Packers and Stockyards Act, dairy cooperative supply-management cartels, seed and crop-protection consolidation (Bayer–Monsanto, ChemChina–Syngenta), grower-contract tournament systems, fertilizer cartels, and grain-handling and rail-car allocation restraints affecting farmers as direct sellers.
09
Gaming-license market division among regional operators, sports-betting platform exclusivity and state-monopoly grants, hotel-room rate algorithms (Rainmaker/Cendyn-style) on the Las Vegas Strip, tribal-compact exclusivity disputes, slot-machine manufacturer tying with management services, and labor-side no-poach agreements among casino-resort operators.
10
Newspaper joint-operating agreements under the Newspaper Preservation Act, broadcast-station and cable-system merger review, retransmission-consent collective bargaining, ad-tech monopolization claims paralleling the DOJ Google case, news-aggregator and search-snippet copyright/competition disputes, and music-licensing collective conduct by ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC consent-decree matters.
11
Launch-services market concentration and EELV/NSSL procurement exclusion, satellite-bandwidth and orbital-slot coordination at the ITU, vertically integrated launch-plus-constellation foreclosure theories (Starlink-style), ground-station and tracking-network access denials, and exclusive government-contract steering. Emerging issues include in-or-orbit servicing standards and lunar-resource extraction rights.
12
Online travel agency parity clauses (Booking, Expedia MFNs) tested in EU and U.S. courts, global distribution system tying, hotel-chain merger review (Marriott–Starwood), all-inclusive resort and timeshare market allocation, cruise-line port-access exclusivity, and airline-hotel-rental car loyalty-program bundling. Recent algorithmic-pricing litigation targets hotel revenue-management software.
Partial List
