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Measuring Compliance With Compulsory Licensing Remedies In The American Microsoft Case, William Page, Seldon Childers
Measuring Compliance With Compulsory Licensing Remedies In The American Microsoft Case, William Page, Seldon Childers
William H. Page
Section III.E of the final judgments in the American Microsoft case requires Microsoft to make available to software developers certain communications protocols that Windows client operating systems use to interoperate with Microsoft's server operating systems. This provision has been by far the most difficult and costly to implement, primarily because of questions about the quality of Microsoft's documentation of the protocols. The plaintiffs' technical experts, in testing the documentation, have found numerous issues, which they have asked Microsoft to resolve. Because of accumulation of unresolved issues, the parties agreed in 2006 to extend Section III.E for up to five more …
A Neo-Chicago Approach To Concerted Action, William H. Page
A Neo-Chicago Approach To Concerted Action, William H. Page
William H. Page
In this article, I offer an approach to concerted action that builds on traditional Chicago School analyses of the issue, but adds a focus on the role of communication. Chicago scholars uniformly identify cartels as the primary target of antitrust enforcement. They have also established much of the framework within which courts and economists analyze concerted action. George Stigler’s seminal theory of oligopoly, which sought to identify the determinants of effective collusion, has spawned an enormous literature in game theory that models the pricing behavior of oligopolists. Richard Posner’s early analysis of tacit collusion - rivals’ coordination of noncompetitive pricing …
The Ftc's Procedural Advantage In Discovering Concerted Action, William H. Page
The Ftc's Procedural Advantage In Discovering Concerted Action, William H. Page
William H. Page
Scholars have long argued that Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act can or should be interpreted to reach more conduct than Section 1 of Sherman Act - whether, in other words, there are gaps in the coverage of Section 1 that allow certain forms of anticompetitive conduct that Section 5 should condemn. Perhaps the most important issue in the interpretation of Section 1 concerns how courts should distinguish conscious parallelism from unlawful concerted action. In this paper, I argue that there is no substantive gap between the two antitrust statutes on this issue-both statutes prohibit (and permit) the …
Standard Oil And U.S. Steel: Predation And Collusion In The Law Of Monopolization And Mergers, William H. Page
Standard Oil And U.S. Steel: Predation And Collusion In The Law Of Monopolization And Mergers, William H. Page
William H. Page
The Supreme Court’s 1911 decision in Standard Oil gave us embryonic versions of two foundational standards of liability under the Sherman Act: the rule of reason under Section 1 and the monopoly power/exclusionary conduct test under Section 2. But a case filed later in 1911, United States v. United States Steel Corporation, shaped the understanding of Standard Oil’s standards of liability for decades. U.S. Steel, eventually decided by the Supreme Court in 1920, upheld the 1901 merger that created "the Corporation," as U.S. Steel was known. The majority found that the efforts of the Corporation and its rivals to control …
Communication And Concerted Action, William H. Page
Communication And Concerted Action, William H. Page
William H. Page
It is a familiar scenario in U.S. antitrust litigation: The plaintiffs allege that a pattern of identical pricing (or refusals to deal) is "concerted" and therefore per se illegal; the defendant responds that the practice is merely "consciously parallel" or "interdependent" and therefore legal. Under U.S. law, to avoid summary judgment or judgment as a matter of law, a plaintiff must produce a "plus factor," evidence that "tends to exclude the possibility" that the defendants' actions were merely interdependent. Courts have identified various plus factors -- for example, evidence that the alleged conduct was against the defendant's interest unless it …
State Action And The Meaning Of Agreement Under Sherman Act: An Approach To Hybrid Restraints, John E. Lopatka, William H. Page
State Action And The Meaning Of Agreement Under Sherman Act: An Approach To Hybrid Restraints, John E. Lopatka, William H. Page
William H. Page
Antitrust observers are familiar with the two-part Midcal test for the immunity of state regulation from federal antitrust laws: the state must clearly articulate its policy to displace competition and must "actively supervise" any private conduct pursuant to the policy. But state action need not meet these requirements if it is "unilateral" and therefore does not conflict with Section 1. Only if a state-authorized restraint is "hybrid," combining state and private action in a way that resembles aprohibited agreement, need the restraint satisfy Midcal. In this article, John Lopatka and Bill Page examine the history andcurrent importance of the distinction …