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Full-Text Articles in Consumer Protection Law
Returning To The Statutory Text: Why The Language Of Section 13(B) Requires Courts To Narrowly Construe The Ftc’S Ability To Obtain Injunctive Relief, Christopher Halm
Returning To The Statutory Text: Why The Language Of Section 13(B) Requires Courts To Narrowly Construe The Ftc’S Ability To Obtain Injunctive Relief, Christopher Halm
Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces over 70 laws in the areas of antitrust and consumer protection, and one valuable tool to support their enforcement is Section 13(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (“Section 13(b)”). Section 13(b), among other features, grants the FTC authority to seek an injunction in district court against any defendant that is “about to violate” one or more of those laws. For the past three decades, courts have adopted a permissive judicial interpretation of that language, authorizing injunctions against defendants when the allegedly impending violations were only “likely to recur” based on past misconduct. This …
When Is Property Intellectual: The Leveraging Problem Essays, Mark R. Patterson
When Is Property Intellectual: The Leveraging Problem Essays, Mark R. Patterson
Faculty Scholarship
Patents and copyrights protect inventions and expression; they do not protect products. This distinction, I argue in this essay, is a key to the antitrust problem of the "leveraging" of intellectual property. In a typical leveraging case, the manufacturer of a durable good, like a copier or computer, refuses to sell replacement parts for its equipment unless the purchaser also hires the manufacturer to service the equipment. Such a practice can be illegal under antitrust law, but when the leveraging products-in this example, replacement parts-are protected by patent or copyright, the manufacturer will often claim that the leveraging is a …