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Lawyers for AT&T told a federal judge Tuesday that the government's antitrust lawsuit challenging the company's merger with Time Warner lacks any meaningful allegations.

DOJ sued the telecommunications giant last week, claiming its vertical merger with Time Warner, which produces television content, would harm consumers because AT&T would be able to “hinder” its rivals by forcing them to pay more for Time Warner's channels, which include HBO and CNN. In a fierce reply Tuesday, AT&T argued their proposed deal poses “absolutely no risk of harm to competition or consumers.”

AT&T and Time Warner are represented by a high-profile team of attorneys, led by O'Melveny & Myers partners Daniel Petrocelli, Katrina Robson and Randall Oppenheimer. Christine Varney, Peter Barbur and Kevin Orsini from Cravath, Swaine & Moore also represent Time Warner, while AT&T has retained Robert Walters and Michael Raiff of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.

“The proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner is a procompetitive, pro-consumer response to an intensely competitive and rapidly changing video marketplace,” the lawyers wrote. “Time Warner produces high-quality video content through its three operating units: Warner Brothers, HBO, and Turner. AT&T distributes video content through its satellite, broadband, and wireless networks. Simply put, no competitor will be eliminated by this merger.”

The group wrote the “way in which Americans watch television has radically and irreversibly changed” and that, though cable companies still lead in providing television entertainment, digital platforms like Netflix and Amazon are spending billions of dollars to create their own content and stream it. Merging, therefore, will allow AT&T and Time Warner to “compete more effectively against market-leading cable incumbents and insurgent tech giants,” the complaint said.

The complaint said that, to have a sound case, the government must prove the merging parties each have significant market power. AT&T operates in a highly competitive distribution market, the lawyers wrote, and Time Warner has an “insignificant market shares” in the content marketplace.

“Indeed, notwithstanding the Government's year-long investigation, the complaint makes no meaningful effort to establish the basic factual predicate of market power, offering no real market analysis or empirical evidence to support its hypothesis that the combination of this particular supplier (among many) and this particular distributor (among many) would harm consumers,” the complaint said.

The complaint also notes the government did not challenge the 2011 merger between Comcast, also a distributor, and NBCUniversal, which owns a “Big Four” broadcast network. The government instead agreed to a set of conditions, including agreements to settle competitive concerns via arbitration. The same judge that oversaw that merger, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, is overseeing the AT&T case.

The lawyers said in the complaint that Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner, “formally and irrevocably” extended to its distributors arbitration protections similar to those used in the Comcast agreement, contingent only upon closing of the merger with AT&T. This “contractual commitment” they said, was “clear proof” that there would not be an incentive to raise the price of Turner content.

“To that end, while the complaint's allegations of competitive harm are wholly without merit, Turner's commitment eliminates even the theoretical risk that lies at the heart of the Government's case—the risk that, post-close, Turner would be more inclined to threaten to 'go dark' on a distributor,” the complaint said.

The lawyers requested that the trial date be set for around Feb. 20, 2018. They noted in their motion that the government opposes that trial date, and instead prefers to set it for May 7, 2018. The current merger agreement expires April 22, 2018.