Law Commons^™

A Machete For The Patent Thicket: Using Noerr-Pennington Doctrine’S Sham Exception To Challenge Abusive Patent Tactics By Pharmaceutical Companies, Lisa Orucevic

Vanderbilt Law Review

Outrageous drug prices have dominated news coverage of the American healthcare system for years. Yet despite widespread condemnation of skyrocketing drug prices, nothing seems to change. Pharmaceutical companies can raise drug prices with impunity because they hold patents on their drugs, which give them monopolies. These monopolies are only supposed to last twenty years, and then competing lower-cost drugs like generics can enter the market, driving down the costs of pharmaceuticals for all. But pharmaceutical companies have created “patent thickets,” dense webs of overlapping patents surrounding one drug, which have artificially extended the companies’ monopolies for years or even decades …

The Customer Is Not Always Right: Balancing Worker And Customer Welfare In Antitrust Law, Clayton J. Masterman

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note analyzes how courts' leniency affects a particular category of anticompetitive buyer conduct: agreements between employers that restrict competition in labor markets. If, as courts and commentators generally agree, the goal of antitrust law is to promote the welfare of consumers, how should courts balance the welfare of workers and customers under antitrust analysis? Arguably, worker welfare should be included in consumer welfare. If so, anticompetitive agreements between employers benefit one subset of consumers (customers), while hurting another subset (workers). The persistent procustomer and antiworker effect of such complicates a court's choice to find conduct per se unreasonable or …

Identifying A Maverick: When Antitrust Law Should Protect A Low-Cost Competitor, Taylor M. Owings

Vanderbilt Law Review

Shortly after taking office, President Barack Obama announced that his Administration would pursue a policy of vigorous antitrust enforcement in order to ensure healthy competition in the economy.' In two of the highest-profile antitrust cases that have followed, the United States Department of Justice ("DOJ") sought to block two proposed mergers in which the target companies were low-cost competitors in their industries. The DOJ won a judgment in November 2011 that blocked retail-tax giant H&R Block from acquiring 2nd Story Software, maker of the low-cost digital tax- preparation program TaxACT. A month later, the DOJ scored another "victory" when AT&T …

The Firm As Cartel Manager, Herbert Hovenkamp, Christopher R. Leslie

Vanderbilt Law Review

Antitrust law is the primary legal obstacle to price fixing, which is condemned by Section One of the Sherman Act. Section One condemns only concerted action between separate entities, not unilateral conduct by a single entity. Firms that engage in price fixing may try to reduce the risk of antitrust liability by structuring their actions to appear to be those of a unified single entity that is beyond the reach of Section One.

In this Article, Professors Hovenkamp and Leslie examine how price-fixing cartels govern themselves and maximize their profits by cooperating and colluding, instead of competing. They then use …

Economic Analysis And Antitrust Law, Thomas D. Morgan

Vanderbilt Law Review

Economic Analysis and Antitrust Law by Terry Calvani and John Siegfried

Professors Calvani and Siegfried have collected, in less than four hundred pages, an extraordinarily useful set of articles providing general information about antitrust economic issues. Some of the articles are classics in the field, while some challenge the existing wisdom. One might have wished for somewhat greater coverage of issues involving vertical relationships, and indeed a separate volume might even have been appropriate on those subjects. The choices made, however, were basically sound, and the editing is both intelligent and useful. This collection could be profitably assigned and used …

Tying Arrangements And The Individual Coercion Doctrine, W. Perry Brandt

Vanderbilt Law Review

At the present time the Individual Coercion Doctrine appears strengthened by the Third Circuit's ruling in Ungar and the Supreme Court's denial of certiorari in that case. Nevertheless, detailed analysis of the Doctrine demonstrates that despite the Doctrine's rather lengthy development, it is inconsistent with the basic legal principles of the law of tying as well as the more general purposes of the antitrust laws. The courts should again undertake a critical analysis of the Doctrine and, as the district court did in Ungar, remove coercion as an independent requirement of tying law.Perhaps in the near future as a result …

Recent Cases, Laurence M. Hamric, William G. Scott, Mitchell M. Purvis, George M. Kryder, Iii, Richard M. Pitt

Vanderbilt Law Review

Laurence M. Hamric

The instant decision demonstrates the inability of the Court, on its own or with the meager guidance provided by Congress, to discern a clear standard by which to measure the propriety of union organizational activity in light of current federal labor and antitrust law. Faced with a fact pattern that did not embody an apparent anticompetitive intent, a classic conspiracy between labor and non-labor entities, or activity clearly unrelated to the legitimate union interest in achieving better wages and working conditions, the Court was forced to abandon the "clear showing" test of Pennington," the"intimately related" test of …

Recent Cases, Journal Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Antitrust Law--Robinson-Patman Act--To Satisfy the "In Commerce" Requirement of Section 2(a) at Least One of the Allegedly Discriminatory Sales in a Secondary-Line Case Must Cross a State Line

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Constitutional Law--Equal Protection--Exclusion of Pregnancy-Related Disabilities from State Salary Compensation Insurance Program Denies Equal Protection to Pregnant Employees

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Criminal Procedure--Grand Juries--Exclusionary Rule in Search and Seizure Cases Does Not Apply to Grand Jury Proceedings

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Securities Regulation-Rule 10b-5--Plaintiffs Who Are Neither Purchasers nor Sellers of Securities May Recover Under Rule 10b-5 if Injured in Their Capacity as Investors as a Direct Consequence of Fraud in Connection with a Securities Transaction …

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Antitrust Law--Restraint of Trade--Applicability of Section 7 of Clayton Act to Bank Mergers

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Constitutional Law--Appointment of Counsel for Indigent Defendants in State Criminal Trials

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Constitutional Law--Civil Rights--State Action--Effect of Standard Urban Redevelopment Land Use Covenant

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Constitutional Law--Free Exercise of Religion--Denial of Unemployment Compensation to Seventh-Day Adventist

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Constitutional Law--Self Incrimination--Effect of a Defendant's Comment on His Codefendant's Silence

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Labor Law--Ability of Individual Employee To Bring Suit Under Section 301 of Taft-Hartley Act

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Administrative Law--Due Process--Expulsion From Public University Requires Notice and Hearing

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Antitrust Law--Investigatory Powers--Federal Trade Commission Has Right To Obtain Private Copies Of Privileged Census Information

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Constitutional Law--Due Process-Escheat By One State of a Fund Claimed By Other States Held To Violate Due Process

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Sales--Warranty--Advertisement That Cigarettes Are Harmless Held An Express Warranty

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Taxation--Income Tax-Deferral Of Prepaid Income Disallowed

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Taxation--Inheritance, Estate and Gift Taxes--Blockage Rule Rejected in Evaluating Stock For Ohio Succession Tax

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Taxation--Use Tax--Commerce and Equal Protection Clauses--Discrimination Against Multi-State Business

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Torts--Negligence--Vendor of Alcoholic Beverages Held Liable for Injuries to Intoxicated Vendee Despite …

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Antitrust Law--Restraint of Trade-Supreme Court Suggests A New Reading of Section 3 of the Clayton Act

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Civil Rights--Abatement and Revival--State Survival and Wrongful Death Statutes Adopted in Federal Civil Rights Act Suits

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Constitutional Law--Tenth Amendment-the Estate of A Veteran Dying Intestate Without Heirs May Constitutionally Escheat to the Federal Rather Than State Government

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Due Process of Law--A State May Deny An Applicant Admission to the Bar for Refusing To Answer Questions About His Advocacy of Subversive Organizations Or Objectives

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Federal Courts--State Security for Expenses Statute Inapplicable in Federal Equity Action Under Securities Exchange Act

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Federal …

For H.R. Ii And S. Ii To Strengthen The Robinson-Patman Act And Amend The Antitrust Law Prohibiting Price Discrimination, Wright Patman M.C.

Vanderbilt Law Review

H. R. 11 and S. 11 are modest and simple legislative proposals.'They provide for no change in our antitrust laws prohibiting price discrimination except to limit somewhat the use of the "good faith" defense. The extent of this limitation goes no further than to assist the Act by providing that the "good faith" defense shall not operate as an absolute and complete bar to a proceeding by the Government against the practices of destructive price discrimination: In other words, those discriminations which would have the effect of substantially lessening competition and tending to create a monopoly may not be defended …

The Lawyer's Role Before Litigation, Lee Loevinger

Vanderbilt Law Review

A lawyer is consulted regarding antitrust aspects of proposed business activities; or regarding the possibility that his client may have a cause of action under some antitrust law. What is his role at this stage? What are his responsibilities? Would these be substantially different if the client's problems had no antitrust element?

The system of formulating legal principles and studying and teaching law on the basis of the decisions of litigated cases has one serious shortcoming, at least, in its tendency to obscure the dual role of the lawyer: first as counsel, and second as advocate. Both lawyers and laymen …