The Sprint Standing Skirmish: AT&T Loses Some Ground, DoJ Gets Road Map Forward.

Any tactician knows that battles can be won or lost by defining the battlefield. Skirmishes like the fight over whether Sprint and C Spire (formerly Cell South) can go ahead with their private lawsuits against AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile help define the terrain for the bigger fights to come.

By ruling on what constitutes a recognizable injury under the antitrust rules and making preliminary determinations about the nature of the market, the Order sets the boundaries of what arguments DoJ can make and what it will need to do to prove its case. Where AT&T manages to have certain market definitions locked in and certain potential injuries excluded as not cognizable under antitrust in these early rounds, it gains an advantage. By contrast, where the court rejects AT&T’s efforts to limit the scope of the review by adopting different market definitions or recognizing certain injuries as addressed by the antitrust law, DoJ gains an advantage.