We remember the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse as the end of the Civil War, despite the fact that Confederate forces remained in the field for several weeks thereafter. The announcement by AT&T and Deutsche Telekom (DT) that they have told the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to dismiss their application to transfer T-Mo to AT&T “without prejudice” is rather similar.

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 (order here). 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.

The Department of Justice Antitrust Division (DoJ) just won its lawsuit to block H&R Block from acquiring its smaller, “maverick” competitor Tax Act. Even with the actual Order sealed for a month to let parties scrub out the trade secrets, a few important things stand out for why this is good news for DoJ in its lawsuit to block AT&T taking over T-Mo. In sports terms, this is like DoJ having a super strong exhibition season going into the regular season of play. While you still need to play the games to see who wins, anyone facing them ought to be worried.

Here are my major takeaways from what we know so far:

Just before the Justice Department announced that it was suing to block AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile, AT&T promised regulators that it would bring 5,000 call center jobs back into the country, if only the merger were approved. Amazon, facing the prospect of paying sales tax in California, promised it would bring 7,000 jobs if only they didn't have to pay those taxes. After noting these parallel promises, Marketplace host Jeremy Hobson quipped, that he promised to create 10,000 jobs if he could be exempted from taxes—honest!

As America returns to work from the Labor Day weekend and as our country faces an uncertain forecast on jobs for the unemployed, the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) lawsuit to block the AT&T/T-Mobile merger was welcome news given that an estimated 20,000 Americans would lose their jobs if it was approved.

Actually, there are several ways AT&T’s attempted purchase of T-Mobile could be illegal, the most obvious of which is if the Department of Justice (DoJ) concludes that the deal is “substantially likely to lessen competition” in violation of the antitrust laws. The next most likely way would be for the FCC to find that transfer of the licenses would be contrary to “the public interest, convenience, and necessity” under Section 310(d).