Competitor collaborations under intensifying scrutiny as regulators extend request for comments on guidance

In December 2024, the agencies withdrew their 2000 Antitrust Guidelines for Collaborations Among Competitors, thereby undermining presumed safe harbors and guideposts for competitor collaborations. 

In a joint announcement on February 23, 2026, the agencies solicited public input on potential new guidance. Acknowledging the regulatory vacuum left by the 2024 withdrawal, the agencies emphasized the potential for procompetitive benefits from competitor collaborations but also flagged the need for direction around new technologies, including algorithmic pricing, information and data sharing, and labor collaborations. The original public comment period, previously set to expire on April 24, was extended until May 21. 

The absence of guidance has been all the more concerning in light of the antitrust issues being raised by the agencies, their state counterparts, and the private bar across each of these domains. 

The DOJ has taken aim at algorithmic pricing with its suit against RealPage and various landlords, alleging an antitrust conspiracy through the exchange of competitively sensitive leasing information through RealPage’s algorithmic software. The software provided near real-time pricing recommendations, and in November, a settlement was reached confining the system to providing historic information (at least 12 months old), among many other restrictions. 

In the data aggregation and benchmarking space, the DOJ may be close to settling its civil case (scheduled for trial in May) against Agri Stats, the benchmarking service it accuses of facilitating antitrust collusion in the turkey, pork, and chicken industries. In addition, public reports are that the DOJ is preparing to sue egg producers, alleging that a price-discovery service, Urner Barry, was used to facilitate price-fixing. 

Labor-related collaborations are also under heightened scrutiny. The FTC announced in 2025 the creation of a joint labor task force to address deceptive, unfair, and anticompetitive labor-market practices. Among the harmful practices featured in the announcement was coordination around diversity and inclusion employment metrics. 

That focus was sharpened by FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson’s early-2026 letters to 42 law firms warning that participation in Diversity Lab’s Mansfield Certification program could raise concerns about the firms’ compliance with antitrust laws, including potentially impermissible information sharing or benchmarking arrangements. 

Taken together, these enforcement efforts underscore why the absence of formal guidance has been so destabilizing: businesses seeking to engage in legitimate, procompetitive collaboration are being asked to navigate evolving antitrust theories without the benefit of clear regulatory signposts.

New guidance for competitor collaborations, if appropriately crafted, could restore some measure of predictability, delineating the safe paths for procompetitive joint work and isolating the areas that the regulators are likely to find problematic. The challenge for the regulators will be to craft useful guidance that accounts for the rapid advances in technology and the nuances in industry-specific applications without freezing innovation. As the guidance emerges, competitor collaborations will remain an area of elevated antitrust risk, demanding close attention from both legal and business teams.

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