Law Commons^™

Role Of Individuals Discrimination In Free Exercise Claims: Putting Iqbal In Its Place, The, Leila Mcneill

Missouri Law Review

Ashcroft v. Iqbal has been widely discussed for three reasons: (1) its extension of Twombly's pleading standard to cases outside the realm of antitrust suits, (2) its application of the collateral order doctrine to a district court order denying an official's motion to dismiss on the basis of qualified immunity in a Bivens claim, and (3) its implication for national security and postSeptember 11th terrorist detainments and investigations. However, Iqbal also implicates the nature of what constitutes unconstitutional religious discrimination under the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause. Therefore, the Iqbal Court's discussion of religious liberty will present problems of interpretation …

Predation Analysis And The Ftc’S Case Against Intel, Daniel A. Crane

Law & Economics Working Papers

The Federal Trade Commission's pending antitrust case against Intel challenges a number of Intel's discounting and rebating practices. The Commission appears poised to apply a cost-price test to the challenged practices, but proposes to include "fixed sunk costs" in the appropriate measure of cost. This paper explains the importance of using cost-price screens to assess unilaterally imposed prices and analyzes the futility of including sunk costs in the relevant cost measure.

Dynamic Efficiencies And Technological Progress In Ec Merger Control, Magdalena Laskowska

Magdalena Laskowska

Economic growth largely hinges upon technological progress and productivity gains are the key to rising incomes and living standards. As high technology industries have significantly increased their prominence in global economic performance in the 1980s and 1990s and economic policy has focused on innovation, merger laws have become a crucial part of antitrust enforcement on both sides of the Atlantic. In recent years, many mergers and acquisitions of control have occurred in innovation-driven industries. Hence, it is important to ask a fundamental question : how is the importance of technological progress reflected in the competition authorities’ decisional practice? Due to …

Double Marginalization And The Counter-Revolution Against Liberal Airline Competition, Hubert Horan

Hubert Horan

Summary: In the last decade, the Department of Transportation has abandoned its previously liberal, market-oriented policies towards international airline competition. While the policies of the 1980s and 90s were designed to maximize industry competitive dynamics so that consumers could benefit from ongoing improvements in price and efficiency levels, recent DOT policies have sought to reduce competition and entrench the position of the largest carriers. These policies have already led to the consolidation of 26 previously independent transatlantic airlines into three collusive alliances that would be virtually immune from future competitive challenges, and in 2009 the DOT has initiated a process …

Public Choice Y Derecho De La Competencia: A Propósito Del Caso Clorox Y Los Acuerdos Colusorios Verticales, Óscar Súmar

Oscar Súmar

No abstract provided.

Moore V. Williamsburg Regional Hospital, Andrew R. Deholl

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Nba And The Single Entity Defense: A Better Case?, Michael A. Mccann

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article will explore the relationship between the National Basketball Association, its independently-owned teams, and associated corporate entities, including the Women’s NBA, NBA Properties, NBA Developmental League, NBA China, and single entity analysis under section 1 of the Sherman Act. Section 1 chiefly aims to prevent competitors from combining their economic power in ways that unduly impair competition or harm consumers, be it in terms of raised prices, diminished quality, or limited choices. Single entities are exempt from section 1 because they are considered “one,” rather than competitors, and thus their collaboration does not implicate anticompetitive concerns.

In American Needle …

An Antitrust Analysis Of The Google Book Search Settlement, Jianji Wang

Jianji Wang

The Google Book Search settlement has raised intense debates on its far-reaching effects on copyright and digital distribution of books. This paper focuses on three issues that raise antitrust and competition concerns. First, the Books Rights Registry created by the settlement is not a cartel of the authors. Due to an author’s ability to opt out from the settlement or to set an independent price for the books, the Registry cannot act as a cartel because it lacks a price control function. Second, Google does not violate the section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing the digital books. The …

Ree To Air? – Legal Protection For Tv Program Formats, Neta-Li E. Gottlieb

Neta-li E Gottlieb

Television is only as strong as its programming. The use of program formats has slowly but surely developed into an important component of the television industry. This paper examines the surprising gap between the constantly growing, multi-billion-dollar trade of program formats and their unclear and contradictory legal treatment. Using an interdisciplinary approach, I look at the characteristics of both the product at hand and the markets it serves to examine possible justification for legal protection. I argue that the use of the term “TV format” is misleading and that a clear separation between the unpublished and published stages of the …

Multiemployer Bargaining And Monopoly: Labor-Management Collusion And A Partial Solution, Anthony B. Sanders

Anthony B Sanders

Multiemployer collective bargaining relationships between unions and employer associations easily devolve into legalized cartels. Once unions establish themselves as the bargaining representative for employers’ employees, the employers have much to gain from banding together as an association, raising their prices and eliminating non-union competition, with unions happily serving as enforcement agents in the scheme. In return, unions receive a share of the increased oligopolistic profits in the form of higher wages and benefits. A threat to such a cartel is an employer who wants to bargain with the union but does not want to accept the terms the association has …

Free To Air? – Legal Protection For Tv Program Formats, Neta-Li E. Gottlieb

Neta-li E Gottlieb

Television is only as strong as its programming. The use of program formats has slowly but surely developed into an important component of the television industry. This paper examines the surprising gap between the constantly growing, multi-billion-dollar trade of program formats and their unclear and contradictory legal treatment. Using an interdisciplinary approach, I look at the characteristics of both the product at hand and the markets it serves to examine possible justification for legal protection. I argue that the use of the term “TV format” is misleading and that a clear separation between the unpublished and published stages of the …

Free To Air? – Legal Protection For Tv Program Formats, Neta-Li E. Gottlieb

Neta-li E Gottlieb

Television is only as strong as its programming. The use of program formats has slowly but surely developed into an important component of the television industry. This paper examines the surprising gap between the constantly growing, multi-billion-dollar trade of program formats and their unclear and contradictory legal treatment. Using an interdisciplinary approach, I look at the characteristics of both the product at hand and the markets it serves to examine possible justification for legal protection. I argue that the use of the term “TV format” is misleading and that a clear separation between the unpublished and published stages of the …

An Antitrust Analysis Of The Google Book Search Settlement, Laura J.J. Wang

Jianji Wang

The Google Book Search settlement has raised intense debates on its far-reaching effects on copyright and digital distribution of books. This paper focuses on three issues that raise antitrust and competition concerns. First, the Books Rights Registry created by the settlement is not a cartel of the authors. Due to an author’s ability to opt out from the settlement or to set an independent price for the books, the Registry cannot act as a cartel because it lacks a price control function. Second, Google does not violate the section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing the digital books. The …

Lessons For Competition Law From The Economic Crisis: Can "Too Big To Fail" Trigger Useful Antitrust Intervention?, Jesse W. Markham

Jesse Markham

This article examines whether, and the extent to which, antitrust law could contribute to a broader regulatory effort to control the too-big-to-fail problem. The article begins by exploring the nature of the problem. Against this backdrop, antitrust policy and rules are considered to evaluate whether antitrust might play a meaningful role. The article concludes that antitrust law, if vigorously enforced with attention paid to the need to avoid too-big-to-fail problems can be a useful public policy tool to address the problem, although it can come nowhere near solving it or preventing recurrences of recent systemic failures.

Special Incentives To Sue, Margaret H. Lemos

Margaret H. Lemos

In an effort to strengthen private enforcement of federal law, Congress regularly employs plaintiff-side attorneys’ fee shifts, damage enhancements, and other mechanisms that promote litigation. Standard economic theory predicts that these devices will increase the volume of suit by private actors, which in turn will bolster enforcement and encourage more voluntary compliance with the law. This Article challenges the conventional wisdom. I use empirical evidence to demonstrate that special incentives to sue do not dependably generate more litigation. More crucially, when those incentives do work, they often trigger a judicial backlash against the very rights that Congress sought to promote. …

Ip Misuse As Foreclosure, Christina Bohannan

Christina Bohannan

In an age of IP expansionism, the doctrine most explicitly concerned with limiting IP overreaching has no defensible basis in IP policy. “Misuse” relates to the IP holder’s use of licenses and other arrangements to obtain rights “beyond the scope” of a statutory IP grant, but the doctrine has not established adequate principles for identifying the practices that should be condemned. The misuse doctrine evolved in patent law and concerned the tying of patented and unpatented goods. Courts held that such tying violated federal patent policy by expanding the statutory monopoly to include a second product not covered by the …

Defining The "Business Of Baseball": A Proposed Framework For Determining The Scope Of Professional Baseball's Antitrust Exemption, Nathaniel Grow

Nathaniel Grow

This article proposes a new analytical framework for determining the proper scope of professional baseball’s antitrust exemption, an issue that has generated surprisingly little scholarly analysis to date. Specifically, the article finds that lower courts have applied the exemption in widely divergent ways, due to a misunderstanding, and in some cases a misinterpretation, of the underlying focus of the United States Supreme Court’s opinions first creating and affirming the exemption. The article argues that future courts should reject the existing lower court precedent, and instead, consistent with the often overlooked focus of the Supreme Court’s decisions, hold that the baseball …

Brands, Competition, And The Law, Deven R. Desai, Spencer Waller

Deven R. Desai

Brands matter. In modern times, brands and brand management have become a central feature of the modern economy and a staple of business theory and business practice. Coca-Cola, Nike, Google, Disney, Apple, Microsoft, BMW, Marlboro, IBM, Kellogg’s, Louis-Vuitton, and Virgin are all large companies, but they are also brands that present powerful, valuable tools for business. Business is fully aware of that power and value. Contrary to the law’s conception of trademarks, brands are used to indicate far more than source and/or quality. Indeed those functions are far down on the list of what most businesses want for their brands. …

Iqbal, Twombly, And The Expected Cost Of False Positive Error, Max Huffman

Max Huffman

Iqbal and Twombly introduced a new standard for pleading federal claims, overruling the five-decades old language from Conley v. Gibson. Instead of plaintiffs being entitled to discovery unless the complaint affirmatively forecloses the possibility of recovery, Iqbal and Twombly require a more searching evaluation of the complaint under an ambiguous “plausibility” standard. The policy behind this increased burden on plaintiffs is to prevent the false positive error that burdensome discovery creates. How the plausibility standard from Iqbal and Twombly should operate in the real world is poorly understood. There is general acknowledgement that no clear guidance exists about how to …

Regulating Relationships Between Competing Broadcasters, Christopher S. Reed

Christopher S Reed

In response to mounting economic challenges in the media industry, some broadcasters have begun entering into agreements whereby one station agrees to sell advertising, produce programming, or take over certain other functions, of another station in the same market. Though such arrangements, often called local marketing or time brokerage agreements, are not particularly new in the broadcasting field, they have been used with increasing frequency in recent years. The Federal Communications Commission has implemented rules and policies that ensure such agreements are used in a manner consistent with the public interest. Because these agreements involve cooperation among competitors, they also …

Did We Avoid Historical Failures Of Antitrust Enforcement During The 2008-09 Financial Crisis?, Daniel A. Crane

Law & Economics Working Papers

This introductory essay for a symposium on antitrust enforcement during economic crises provides a brief historical overview of the failures of antitrust enforcement during major economic crises and wars in the first half of the twentieth century. It then considers the reasons that historical narrative breaks off in the second half of the twentieth century and asks whether there is evidence of its revival during the recent economic crisis.

The Ftc's Anticompetitive Pricing Case Against Intel, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The FTC’s wide ranging complaint against Intel Corporation indicates that the FTC intends to rely on the “unfair methods of competition” language in §5 of the FTC Act to reach beyond the proscriptions on unilateral conduct contained in §2 of the Sherman Act. The Supreme Court has expressly authorized such expansion, and statutory text, legislative history and legal policy all support it. While §2 reaches only conduct that threatens to “monopolize” a market, the “unfair methods of competition” language can reach improper abuses of a dominant position that fall short of creating monopoly. Further, the FTC has expertise that courts …

Tying Arrangements And Antitrust Harm, Herbert Hovenkamp

Herbert Hovenkamp

A tying arrangement is a seller’s requirement that a customer may purchase its “tying” product only by taking its “tied” product. In a variable proportion tie the purchaser can vary her purchases of the tied product. For example, a customer might purchase a single printer, but either a contract or technological design requires her to purchase varying numbers of printer cartridges from the same manufacturer. Such arrangements are widely considered to be price discrimination devices, but their economic effects have been controversial.

Price discrimination comes in various “degrees.” In third degree price discrimination the seller isolates two or more different …

Intra-Enterprise Activity, Joint Ventures And Sports Leagues: Identifying Unilateral Conduct Under The Antitrust Laws, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

In the American Needle case the Supreme Court will consider whether the NFL’s decision to give an exclusive trademark license to one firm should be counted as “unilateral” on the NFL’s part, or rather as the concerted joint venture activity of the NFL’s individual member teams. The intellectual property in question is not trademarks in the NFL itself, but rather the trademarks and other intellectual property developed separately by each individual team, and which the teams in turn have licensed exclusively to the NFL.

In general, when a joint venture is engaged in its own business the unilateral characterization is …

The Economics Of Railroad “Captive Shipper” Legislation, Russell W. Pittman

Russell W. Pittman

Recent rate increases by U.S. freight railroads have refocused attention on regulation, deregulation, and regulatory reforms in the railroad industry. Legislation introduced into Congress would render a variety of railroad behavior newly subject to the jurisdiction of the antitrust statutes, with potential enforcement by the Antitrust Division and the FTC and through lawsuits brought by state attorneys general or private parties. This paper considers the economic issues raised by legislation and the likely impacts on competition and welfare.

The Insurance Industry's Antitrust Immunity, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act provides that federal legislation generally, including the antitrust laws, is “applicable to the business of insurance [only] to the extent that such business is not regulated by State law.” The statute was enacted after United States v. South Eastern Underwriters Assn. (1944), held that insurance transactions were “interstate commerce” and thus subject to the antitrust laws. That case had in turn undermined the traditional view expressed in Paul v. Virginia (1868), that insurance was not interstate commerce, but strictly local transactions. The South Eastern case followed in turn upon the Supreme Court's decision in Wickard v. …

Reflections On Section 5 Of The Ftc Act And The Ftc’S Case Against Intel, Daniel A. Crane

Law & Economics Working Papers

This paper explores the policy implications of the FTC's decision to file its enforcement action against Intel under Section 5 of the FTC Act and declare that it has the power to go further under Section 5's "unfair competition" prong than it could under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. It argues that Intel is an inappropriate case for the Commission to make a bid for Section 5 independence since none of the Commission's institutional advantages over Article III courts justifies a departure from ordinary Section 2 norms in this case. Indeed, the Intel case has the potential to set …

Fumbling Away The Season: Will The Expiration Of The Nfl – Nflpa Cba Result In The Loss Of The 2011 Season And Beyond?, Jeffrey Frank Levine

Jeffrey Frank Levine

This article examines the current negotiations between the NFL and the NFLPA. The article scrutinizes the bargaining history of the parties at great length and discusses the legal/factual issues as well as the arguments vital to this relationship.

After providing the appropriate history and law governing this issue, the authors choose sides and put forth the likely arguments that the labor and management may make during the bargaining process.

The article closes by predicting whether the upcoming case of Am. Needle v. Nat’l Football League will impact the CBA negotiations and whether there will be a lockout.

In The Wake Of Empagran – Lights Out On Foreign Activity Falling Under Sherman Act Jurisdiction? Courts Carve Out A Prevailing Standard, Kelly L. Tucker

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Lorain, Aspen, And The Future Of Section 2 Enforcement, Xiao Jeff Liu

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The Sherman Antitrust Act § 2 makes monopolizing or attempting to monopolize a particular trade or aspects of a trade a federal felony. More specifically, Section 2 of the Act addresses a firm's unilateral conduct. Under the administration of former President George W. Bush, a comprehensive guideline titled Competition and Monopoly: Single-Firm Conduct under Section 2 of the Sherman Act ("Bush Guidelines") was adopted in September of 2008 for enforcing Section 2 violations. Under President Barack Obama's administration, however, the enforcement of antitrust laws is expected to undergo a radical transformation. On May 11, 2009, Christine A. Varney, the Assistant …