Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

Do Patent Challenges Increase Competition?, Stephen Yelderman

Journal Articles

This Article is the first to seriously scrutinize the claim that patent challenges lead to increased competition. It identifies a number of conditions that must hold for a patent challenge to provide this particular benefit, and evaluates the reasonableness of assuming that the pro-competitive benefits of patent challenges are generally available. As it turns out, there are a number of ways these conditions can and regularly do fail. This Article synthesizes legal doctrine, recent empirical scholarship, and several novel case studies to identify categories of challenges in which the potential benefits for competition are smaller than previously thought or, in …

Understanding Behavioral Antitrust, Avishalom Tor

Journal Articles

Behavioral antitrust – the application to antitrust analysis of empirical evidence of robust behavioral deviations from strict rationality – is increasingly popular and hotly debated by legal scholars and the enforcement agencies alike. This Article shows, however, that both proponents and opponents of behavioral antitrust frequently and fundamentally misconstrue its methodology, treating concrete empirical phenomena as if they were broad hypothetical assumptions. Because of this fundamental methodological error, scholars often make three classes of mistakes in behavioral antitrust analyses: First, they fail to appreciate the variability and heterogeneity of behavioral phenomena; second, they disregard the concrete ways in which markets, …

Unilateral, Anticompetitive Acquisitions Of Dominance Or Monopoly Power, Avishalom Tor

Journal Articles

The prohibition of certain types of anticompetitive unilateral conduct by firms possessing a substantial degree of market power is a cornerstone of competition law regimes worldwide. Yet notwithstanding the social costs of monopoly modern legal regimes refrain from prohibiting it outright. Instead, competition laws prohibit monopolies or dominant firms from engaging in those types of anticompetitive conduct that amount to monopolizing or an abuse of dominant position. Importantly, anticompetitive conduct can take place both on the road to monopoly and, later on, once substantial market power has been achieved. Legal regimes nevertheless tend either to ignore or pay only limited …

The Extraterritorial Application Of Antitrust Laws: The United States And European Community Approaches, Roger P. Alford

Journal Articles

This Arti­cle compares the differing approaches of the United States and the European Community as they wrestle with the question of how to regulate foreign anticompetitive activity. More specifically, this Arti­cle highlights the distinctive features of the U.S. "effects doctrine" and the European Community's "implementation approach" and ana­lyzes the differences that exist between the two systems. Only the U.S. doctrine openly provides for the consideration of international comity concerns, but both approaches have been used liberally to assert jurisdiction over foreign defendants. Part II of this Article pro­vides a background to the subject by briefly outlining the traditional bases of …

Competition At The Teller's Window?: Altered Antitrust Standards For Banks And Other Financial Institutions, Joseph P. Bauer, Earl W. Kintner

Journal Articles

Congressional and judicial attitudes towards the banking industry have reflected two, sometimes conflicting, goals-the maintenance of the solvency of financial institutions to protect the interests of depositors, other creditors and the economy at large; and the promotion of competition among these institutions and in the economy. The advancement of these goals has been reflected in the application of the antitrust laws to the industry.

For the most part, the Sherman and Clayton Acts apply with the same force and scope to financial institutions as to other industries. In some cases, however, the goal of institutional protection is favored, and the …