Law Commons^™

The Ncaa's Challenge In Determining Nil Market Value, Meg Penrose

Faculty Scholarship

This Article proceeds in three parts. Part II discusses the changes that NIL has wrought in college athletics. It briefly explains collectives and their impact on NIL. Part III discusses the impossibility of limiting athletes’ “fair market value” given market value depends on what the market is willing to pay. Congress has failed to pass national legislation. Yet the mosaic of state laws is simply unfit to stand in for national legislation. And, following multiple litigation losses, the NCAA cannot be trusted to “value” the athletes themselves. Market value, if one is to be established, must be uniform and assessed …

A Reputational View Of Antitrust’S Consumer Welfare Standard, Murat C. Mungan, John M. Yun

Faculty Scholarship

A reform movement is underway in antitrust. Citing prior enforcement failures, deviations from the original intent of the antitrust laws, and overall rising levels of sector concentration, some are seeking to fundamentally alter or altogether replace the current consumer welfare standard, which has guided courts over the past fifty years. This policy push has sparked an intense debate over the best approach to antitrust law enforcement. In this Article, we examine a previously unexplored potential social cost from moving away from the consumer welfare standard: a loss in the information value to the public from a finding of liability. A …

Gamestopped: How Robinhood’S Gamestop Trading Halt Reveals The Complexities Of Retail Investor Protection, Neal Newman

Faculty Scholarship

Should brokers have the unfettered right to restrict investor trading? GameStop, a brick-and-mortar video game retailer, had been experiencing declining revenues since 2016. However, GameStop saw its share price climb almost 1000 percent in the span of a one- week period from January 21, 2021 to January 27, 2021 due to retail investors buying significant amounts of GameStop shares during that period. Melvin Capital, a hedge fund, ended up losing billions as they were betting that GameStop shares would lose value instead of increase—a practice referred to as short selling. On January 28, 2021, brokers inexplicably halted trading on GameStop …

A Proposed Sec Cyber Data Disclosure Advisory Commission, Lawrence J. Trautman, Neal Newman

Faculty Scholarship

Constant cyber threats result in: intellectual property loss; data disruption; ransomware attacks; theft of valuable company intellectual property and sensitive customer information. During March 2022, The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a proposed rule addressing Cybersecurity Risk Management, Strategy, Governance, and Incident Disclosure, which requires: 1. Current reporting about material cybersecurity incidents; 2. Periodic disclosures about a registrant’s policies and procedures to identify and manage cybersecurity risks; 3. Management’s role in implementing cybersecurity policies and procedures; 4. Board of directors’ cybersecurity expertise, if any, and its oversight of cybersecurity risk; 5. Registrants to provide updates about previously reported cybersecurity …

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (Spacs) And The Sec, Neal Newman, Lawrence J. Trautman

Faculty Scholarship

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are simply enterprises that raise money from the public with the intention of purchasing an existing business and becoming publicly traded in the securities markets. If the SPAC is successful in raising money and the acquisition takes place, the target company takes the SPAC’s place on a stock exchange in a transaction that resembles a public offering. Also known as “blank-check” or “reverse merger” companies, this process avoids many of the pitfalls of a traditional initial public offering.

During late 2020 and 2021 an unprecedented surge in the popularity and issuance of Special Purpose Acquisition …

A Copernican View Of Health Care Antitrust, William M. Sage, Peter J. Hammer

Faculty Scholarship

Sage and Hammer use the analogy of Copernican astronomy to suggest that understanding the dramatic change wrought by managed care requires a conceptual reorientation regarding the meaning of competition in health care and its appropriate legal and regulatory oversight. Both share the belief that misperceiving the world limits potential for technical and social progress.

Optimal Standards Of Proof In Antitrust, Murat C. Mungan, Joshua Wright

Faculty Scholarship

Economic analyses of antitrust institutions have thus far focused predominantly on optimal penalties and the design of substantive legal rules, and have largely ignored the standard of proof used in trials as a policy tool in shaping behavior. This neglected tool can play a unique role in the antitrust context, where a given firm may have the choice to engage in exceptional anticompetitive or procompetitive behavior, or simply follow more conventional business practices. The standard of proof used in determining the legality of a firm’s conduct affects not only whether the firm chooses to engage in pro- versus anticompetitive behavior, …

The Use Doctrine In Trademark Law: Issues From Trade And Transborder Reputation, Srividhya Ragavan

Faculty Scholarship

Mindful of the current trend within the United States to revive the focus on the use of trademark to determine a mark’s ability to act as a source indicator, in this paper I highlight how focusing on use can create disparate results by examining the role of use when dealing with well-known marks. Hence, this paper implicates the prescriptions from the harmonized trade regime, especially trademark law. In doing so, the paper outlines larger public policy concerns that will ensue especially considering the role of the use doctrine in the context of international harmonization of protection of well-known trademarks. In …

Rico Had A Birthday! A Fifty-Year Retrospective Of Questions Answered And Open, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) came into the world in 1970, a time of great social upheaval that was accompanied by shifting attitudes towards both crime and civil litigation. From the outset, the statute’s complexity, ambiguity, and uncertain purpose have confounded courts and commentators. At least some doubts as to the statute’s meaning and application arise because it has criminal and civil components that subject it to the twin—yet antithetical—social impulses to be “tough on crime” while containing a perceived “litigation explosion.” In this Article, I situate RICO in this larger context and offer that context as …

The Growing Monopoly In The Corn Seed Industry: Is It Time For The Government To Interfere?, Bethany K Sumpter

Texas A&M Law Review

How a company conducts business is often a consumer concern. Individuals have accused company after company of monopolistic behavior. These individuals have also criticized the Department of Justice for not stopping a monopoly from forming in a specific industry. An example is the corn seed industry, where stakeholders have accused companies of monopolistic behavior. Recent mergers and acquisitions in the corn seed industry have left fewer companies in control, and because of this consolidation, individuals are urging the government to act. This Comment argues that, while the corn seed industry is on the road to containing a monopoly, the industry …

Is Biopharma Ready For The Standard Wars?, Jorge L. Contreras

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This symposium contribution sheds new light on Momenta v. Amphastar, a case in which issues relating to standardization and patent disclosure that have previously been observed in the semiconductor, computing, and telecommunications sectors found their way into a dispute between two biosimilar manufacturers. One such manufacturer, Momenta, participated in the development of a standard for testing the purity of generic enoxaparin under the auspices of the United States Pharmacopeial Convention but failed to disclose that it had applied for a patent on the testing method. When Momenta later sued Amphastar for patent infringement by using the method in accordance with …

The Easterbrook Theorem: An Application To Digital Markets, Joshua D. Wright, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

The rise of large firms in the digital economy, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, has rekindled the debate about monopolization law. There are proposals to make finding liability easier against alleged digital monopolists by relaxing substantive standards; to flip burdens of proof; and to overturn broad swaths of existing Supreme Court precedent, and even to condemn a law review article. Frank Easterbrook’s seminal 1984 article, The Limits of Antitrust, theorizes that Type I error costs are greater than Type II error costs in the antitrust context, a proposition that has been woven deeply into antitrust law by the Supreme …

The Race To The Middle, William Magnuson

Faculty Scholarship

How does federalism affect the quality of law? It is one of the fundamental questions of our constitutional system. Scholars of federalism generally fall into one of two camps on the question. One camp argues that regulatory competition between states leads to a “race to the bottom,” in which states adopt progressively worse laws in order to pander to powerful constituencies. The other camp, conversely, argues that regulatory competition leads to a “race to the top,” incentivizing states to adopt progressively better laws in the search for more desirable outcomes for their constituencies. Despite their apparent differences, however, both the …

Antitrust And Consumer Protection, Leslie Sara Hyman, Matthew J. Mcgowan

Student Scholarship

Consumer welfare is the common concern of the antitrust laws, the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act (DTPA), the Texas Insurance Code (TIC), and various other statutes prohibiting fraudulent conduct in dealing with consumers. Antitrust laws, however, primarily address the misuse of market power to harm consumers, while anti-deception statutes focus on consumer harm brought about through

deception and a litany of other unlawful practices. The antitrust laws and the anti-fraud statutory schemes therefore are best viewed as focusing on complementary aspects of consumer welfare.

This article covers significant developments under federal and Texas antitrust laws and consumer protection laws …

China's Anti-Corruption Crackdown And The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Daniel C.K. Chow

Texas A&M Law Review

China’s highly publicized crackdown on corruption may affect the type and number of cases in China that arise under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), but it should not be assumed that the crackdown will necessarily lead to fewer FCPA prosecutions. Although there is some overlap of the goals of China’s corruption crackdown and the goals of the FCPA, China’s crackdown also serves important goals of the ruling Communist Party. The main goal of the current crackdown is to reinforce the Party’s power by targeting enemies and rivals of the current leadership. The crackdown is not aimed at prohibiting bribes …

The Antitrusting Of Patentability, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Faculty Scholarship

Deciding a patent’s validity is costly, and so is deciding it incorrectly. Judges and juries must expend significant resources in order to reach a patent validity determination that is properly informed by the relevant facts. At the same time, patent validity determinations reached quickly and cheaply may conserve resources today while creating future costs. Wrongly preserving an invalid patent can distort the competitive market and enable abuses, such as nuisance litigation. Meanwhile, wrongly striking down a valid patent can undermine incentives for continued investment and commercialization in knowledge assets. Courts facing patent validity issues have begun to strike this balance …

Making Meaning: Towards A Narrative Theory Of Statutory Interpretation And Judicial Justification, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The act of judging is complex involving finding facts, interpreting law, and then deciding a particular dispute. But these are not discreet functions: they bleed into one another and are thus interdependent. This article aims to reveal-at least in part-how judges approach this process. To do so, I look at three sets of civil RICO cases that align and diverge from civil antitrust precedents. I then posit that the judges in these cases base their decisions on assumptions about RICO's purpose. These assumptions, though often tacit and therefore not subject to direct observation, are nonetheless sometimes revealed when a judge …

Assembled Products: The Key To More Effective Competition And Antitrust Oversight In Health Care, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that recent calls for antitrust enforcement to protect health insurers from hospital and physician consolidation are incomplete. The principal obstacle to effective competition in health care is not that one or the other party has too much bargaining power, but that they have been buying and selling the wrong things. Vigorous antitrust enforcement will benefit health care consumers only if it accounts for the competitive distortions caused by the sector’s long history of government regulation. Because of regulation, what pass for products in health care are typically small process steps and isolated components that can be assigned …

Our 'Patchwork' Health Care System: Melodic Variations, Counterpoint, And The Future Role Of Physicians, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

This Foreword to a forthcoming symposium on the "patchwork" health care system to be published in the Houston Journal of Health Law & Policy considers whether current reactions to fragmentation in health care represent minor variations on a longstanding theme in US health policy or offer a more substantial counterpoint to that theme. The theme is this: that perfect physicians should be allowed to control health care even if safeguards are needed in practice because real physicians are not perfect. The Foreword previews four scholarly articles featured in the published symposium. It concludes that, while all the articles present original …

Framing Franchise Antitrust Litigation: The Legacy Of Kodak And Queen City Pizza, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

A decade ago, many antitrust commentators were predicting a “revival” of franchise antitrust claims flowing in the wake of Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services, Inc. The thinking was that Kodak’s recognition of a claim for monopolization of an “aftermarket” for parts and services separate from each other and from a primary product might be extended to cover franchise relationships in which the franchisee is required to purchase fungible products from its franchisor, even though those products could be purchased elsewhere on more favorable terms. Fairly quickly, though, the Third Circuit decided Queen City Pizza, Inc. v. Domino’s Pizza, …

After The Fall: Financial Crisis And The International Order, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have challenged the international order to a degree not seen since World War II — and perhaps the Great Depression. As the U.S. housing crisis metastasized into a financial and economic crisis of grave proportions, and spread to nearly every corner of the globe, the strength of our international institutions — the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the Group of Twenty, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, and others — was tested as never before. Likewise tested, were the limits of our national commitment to those institutions, to our international obligations, and to global engagement more …

Trapped In A Metaphor: The Limited Implications Of Federalism For Corporate Governance, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

Trapped in a metaphor articulated at the founding of modern corporate law, the study of corporate governance has - for some thirty years - been asking the wrong questions. Rather than a singular race among states, whether to the bottom or the top, the synthesis of William Cary and Ralph Winter’s famous exchange is better understood as two competitions, each serving distinct normative ends. Managerial competition advances the project that has motivated corporate law since Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means - effective regulation of the separation of ownership and control. State competition, by contrast, does not promote a race to …

State Action Antitrust Exemption Collides With Deregulation: Rehabilitating The Foreseeability Doctrine, Elizabeth Trujillo

Faculty Scholarship

The state action antitrust exemption, also known as the state action immunity doctrine, is used by antitrust defendants to shield themselves against antitrust liability in instances where their anticompetitive conduct, if not under the aegis of state policy, would have been deemed a violation of federal antitrust law. Under the Midcal test, a court may grant state action immunity to a defendant if it is proven that the alleged anticompetitive conduct is pursuant to a clearly-articulated state policy and has been actively supervised by the state.

This paper evaluates the role, function, and definition of the state action exemption in …

From "Federalization" To "Mixed Governance" In Corporate Law: A Defense Of Sarbanes-Oxley, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

Since the very moment of its adoption, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has been subject to a litany of critiques, many of them seemingly well-placed. The almost universal condemnation of the Act for its asserted 'federalization' of corporate law, by contrast, deserves short shrift. Though widely invoked - and blithely accepted - dissection of this argument against the legislation shows it to rely either on flawed assumptions or on normative preferences not ordinarily acknowledged (or perhaps even accepted) by those who criticize Sarbanes-Oxley for its federalization of state corporate law.

Once we appreciate as much, we can begin by replacing …

Law's Signal: A Cueing Theory Of Law In Market Transition, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

Securities markets are commonly assumed to spring forth at the intersection of an adequate supply of, and a healthy demand for, investment capital. In recent years, however, seemingly failed market transitions - the failure of new markets to emerge and of existing markets to evolve - have called this assumption into question. From the developed economies of Germany and Japan to the developing countries of central and eastern Europe, securities markets have exhibited some inability to take root. The failure of U.S. securities markets, and particularly the New York Stock Exchange, to make greater use of computerized trading, communications, and …

Antitrust, Health Care Quality, And The Courts, Peter J. Hammer, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

Antitrust law represents the principal legal tool that the United States employs to police private markets, yet it often relegates quality and nonprice considerations to a secondary position. While antitrust law espouses the belief that vigorous competition will enhance quality as well as price, little evidence exists of the practical ability of courts to deliver on that promise. In this Article, Professors Hammer and Sage examine American health care as a vehicle for advancing understanding of the nexus among competition, quality, and antitrust law. The Article reports the results of a comprehensive empirical review of judicial opinions in health care …

Competing On Quality Of Care: The Need To Develop A Competition Policy For Health Care Markets, William M. Sage, Peter J. Hammer

Faculty Scholarship

As American health care moves from a professionally dominated to a marketdominated model, concerns have been voiced that competition, once unleashed, will focus on price to the detriment of quality. Although quality has been extensively analyzed in health services research, the role of quality in competition policy has not been elucidated. While economists may theorize about non-price competition, courts in antitrust cases often follow simpler models of competition based on price and output, either ignoring quality as a competitive dimension or assuming that it will occur in tandem with price competition. This unsystematic approach is inadequate for the formulation of …