The US Federal Trade Commission may have lost a battle in its legal war with Microsoft over the company"s planned purchase of Activision Blizzard this week. However, it apparently thinks it can win the war.
The FTC has filed an appeal (via The Verge) of Tuesday"s court decision where a judge denied its request for a preliminary injunction against Microsoft to keep it from closing the deal to buy game publisher Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. The FTC"s filing request will now go to the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The FTC has not yet revealed its arguments over why Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley’s ruling should be overturned.
Before that appeal is even heard, the FTC will also likely ask the appeals court to extend the current temporary restraining order against Microsoft before it decides on the appeal. That order is slated to end on Friday, July 14 at 11:59 pm Pacific time.
If the appeals court doesn"t act on extending that order, it could, in theory, allow Microsoft to officially close the deal to buy Activision Blizzard by its deadline on July 18.
Even if that happens, and that"s a big "if", Microsoft still has to deal with the UK Competition and Markets Authority"s block of the deal in that country in late April. This week, Microsoft and the CMA agreed to pause their legal battle, which would have the case heard by the UK Competition Appeals Tribunal later in July, and enter talks to resolve their differences.
Microsoft stated this week it was willing to address "how the transaction might be modified in order to address those concerns in a way that is acceptable to the CMA". However, today a spokesperson for the CMA said that Microsoft would have to "restructure a deal, which can lead to a new merger investigation."