Law Commons^™

All Bets Are Off: Preempting Major League Baseball’S Monopoly On Sports Betting Data, Beatrice Lucas

Washington Law Review

Major League Baseball is in the process of collectivizing data used in sports betting. This could be exempt from antitrust scrutiny if the conduct falls within the “business of baseball.” Such an exemption raises the question of whether collecting official league data is sufficiently attenuated from the “business of baseball” to be subject to antitrust law, and if so, whether MLB violates the Sherman Act by excluding competitors from the league data market. This Comment makes a two-fold argument. First, it argues that the “business of baseball” should be constrained to cover activities directly linked to putting on baseball games. …

Ride-Hailing Drivers As Autonomous Independent Contractors: Let Them Bargain!, Ronald C. Brown

Washington International Law Journal

“Autonomous” workers include most gig-platform drivers, like those working globally for Uber and Lyft, who are usually classified as independent contractors and are ineligible for labor protections and benefits. The “new economy” and its business model, with its fissurization and increased use of contingent and outsourced workers hired as independent contractors, provide employers flexibility and lower costs by shifting labor costs to the workers. Many of these workers operate more as employees rather than genuine independent contractors or self-employed entrepreneurs, causing lost employee labor benefits and costing the government billions of lost tax dollars. Legal attempts continue to classify these …

The Antitrust Duty To Deal And Intellectual Property Rights, James C. Burling, William F. Lee, Anita K. Krug

Articles

This Article discusses how courts have addressed so-called ‘"duty-to-deal" antitrust claims involving intellectual property, and what they should do in those circumstances to ensure appropriate deference to the competition goals of intellectual property doctrine.

Part II discusses duty-to-deal principles in the general case, where intellectual property rights are not at issue, noting that hard and fast rules have yet to emerge.

Part III discusses the approaches courts have taken in the intellectual property context and contends that, although many courts have conducted their analyses with a view to the objectives of patent law, at least two have not, with potentially …

The Sovereign Compulsion Defense In Antitrust Actions And The Role Of Statements By Foreign Governments, Steven J. Hawes

Washington Law Review

Large numbers of export cartels and increasing governmental involvement in commerce present the potential for greater conflicts between United States antitrust law and the decrees of foreign governments. Sovereign compulsion as a defense to antitrust complaints is one method for dealing with the contradictory obligations imposed on private parties where such conflicts exist. Sovereign compulsion has been discussed by courts and commentators many times in recent years, yet the limits of the defense and the requirements for its application remain unclear. To demonstrate a sovereign compulsion defense, defendants must show that their actions, although possibly in violation of United States …

Streamlining Antitrust Litigation By "Facial Examination" Of Restraints: The Burger Court And The Per Se-Rule Of Reason Distinction, Edward Brunet

Washington Law Review

Against a backdrop of a definitional skepticism, this article focuses on the important Burger Court contribution to the per se and rule of reason approaches. The Burger Court now requires a facial examination of antitrust restraints that may improve the lethargic process of antitrust litigation. Much of the article concerns the differences between the per se and rule of reason tests. The Burger Court's decisions, however, require that careful attention be given to the similar and complementary features of the rule of reason and per se methods. The article examines carefully the methodologies courts employ to classify alleged restraints as …

Purpose And Effect In Sherman Act Conspiracies, Richard A. Wirtz

Washington Law Review

The Gypsum decision supplies the proper occasion for a renewed effort to sort out and line up the Court's pronouncements since Trans-Missouri concerning the respective functions in cases arising under section 1 of proof of anticompetitive purpose and effect. Once this is done, a reasonably coherent body of doctrine emerges and the unresolved issues come more clearly into focus. The first two sections of this article deal with purpose and effect as determinants, respectively, of "restraint of trade" and of "contract, combination . . . and conspiracy." The third section takes up the problems that arise when the doctrine that …