Law Commons^™

Writing Better Jury Instructions: Antitrust As An Example, Joshua P. Davis, Shannon Wheatman, Cristen Stephansky

Joshua P. Davis

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 …

Deactivating Actavis: The Clash Between The Supreme Court And (Some) Lower Courts, Joshua Davis, Ryan Mcewan

Joshua P. Davis

Numerous trial courts have misinterpreted the Supreme Court’s recent decision in FTC v. Actavis, Inc. An interesting question is why they have done so. Perhaps lower courts disagree with the Supreme Court about so-called “reverse payment” cases, the subject of the Actavis opinion. Or perhaps they simply have made random mistakes, as is perhaps inevitable, particularly in a challenging area of the law like antitrust. This Article suggests an alternative account: that lower courts are seeking clear guidance from Actavis, clear guidance that the Supreme Court has not tended to provide in antitrust cases in general and that it did …

Federal Antitrust Law : A Treatise On The Antitrust Laws Of The United States, Joseph Bauer, Matthew Bender

Joseph P. Bauer

This master treatise provides a comprehensive analysis of the development and current status of antitrust law, as well as practical guidance for the application of that law. The brevity and generality of the language of relevant acts, combined with the ever-increasing volume of antitrust litigation and varying philosophies of enforcement and interpretation by courts and agencies, makes Federal Antitrust Law indispensable to corporate counsel, government attorneys, and private practitioners specializing in antitrust law. Three volumes focus exclusively on nearly 75 years of Federal Trade Commission work, a subject neglected in other antitrust works. Includes thorough examinations of the FTC Act; …

On The Rise Of Shareholder Primacy, Signs Of Its Fall, And The Return Of Managerialism (In The Closet), Lynn Stout

Lynn A. Stout

In their 1932 opus "The Modern Corporation and Public Property," Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means famously documented the evolution of a new economic entity—the public corporation. What made the public corporation “public,” of course, was that it had thousands or even hundreds of thousands of shareholders, none of whom owned more than a small fraction of outstanding shares. As a result, the public firm’s shareholders had little individual incentive to pay close attention to what was going on inside the firm, or even to vote. Dispersed shareholders were rationally apathetic. If they voted at all, they usually voted to approve …

All-Units Discounts As A Partial Foreclosure Device, Yong Chao, Guofu Tan

Yong Chao

All-units discounts (AUD) are pricing schemes that lower a buyer’s marginal price on every unit purchased when the buyer’s purchase exceeds or is equal to a pre-specified threshold. The AUD and related conditional rebates are commonly used in both final-goods and intermediate-goods markets. Although the existing literature has thus far focused on interpreting the AUD as a price discrimination tool, investment incentive program, or rent-shifting instrument, the antitrust concerns on the AUD and related conditional rebates are often their plausible exclusionary effects.

In this article, we investigate strategic effects of volume-threshold based AUD used by a dominant firm in the …

Antidumping Laws As Barriers To Trade--The United States And The International Antidumping Code, John Barceló Iii

John J. Barceló III

No abstract provided.

Acpera And What Business Lawyers Need To Know Right Away In An Antitrust Investigation, Robert Sanger

Robert M. Sanger

Just about every practitioner advising businesses needs to be up-to-date on antitrust law. It is all too easy for a person involved in business to make casual comments or engage in what they think is legitimate activity only to find that they are the subject of a federal or state investigation for horizontal or vertical restraint of trade or price fixing, customer allocation, bid-rigging, or some other form of technically prohibited behavior. Blatant willful violations are, understandably, criminal but technical violations are a part of the trend of state and federal overcriminalization. Potential criminal prosecution for technical antitrust violations is …

Reexamining The Role Of Illinois Brick In Modern Antitrust Standing Analysis, Jeffrey Harrison

Jeffrey L Harrison

This Article argues that it is time for either the Court or Congress to reexamine Illinois Brick for the purpose of reconciling it with more general principles of antitrust standing. The overall goals of such an endeavor would be to ensure consistent treatment of similarly situated potential plaintiffs and to rationalize private antitrust enforcement.

Monopolization, Innovation, And Consumer Welfare, John Lopatka, William Page

William H. Page

While most commentators and the enforcement agencies voice support for the consumer welfare standard, substantial disagreement exists over when economic theory justifies a presumption of consumer injury. Virtually all would subscribe to the theoretical prediction that an effective cartel will likely inflict consumer injury by reducing output and thus increasing prices. But the academic and judicial consensus disappears when the theory at issue predicts that a practice -- a merger or a predatory pricing campaign, for example -- will harm consumers in the future through some complex sequence of events.

In our view, the desire to protect innovation is legitimate, …

Cartelization Through Buyer Groups, Chris Doyle, Martijn Han

Martijn A. Han

Retailers may enjoy stable cartel rents in their output market through the formation of a buyer group in their input market. A buyer group allows retailers to commit credibly to increased input prices, which serve to reduce combined final output to the monopoly level; increased input costs are then refunded from suppliers to retailers through slotting allowances or rebates. The stability of such an ‘implied cartel’ depends on the retailers’ incentives to source their inputs secretly from a supplier outside of the buyer group arrangement at lower input prices. Cheating is limited if retailers sign exclusive dealing or minimum purchase …

"Apple Vs. Samsung: Three Possible Outcomes" (Quotes: Mark Mckenna) Cnn Money, Mark Mckenna

Mark P. McKenna

Apple vs. Samsung: Three possible outcomes article by David Goldman quotes: Mark McKenna in CNN Money on Aug 24, 2012.

"I have been surprised that Samsung seems to have been on the defensive so much," said Mark McKenna, a law professor and intellectual property specialist at the University of Notre Dame.

Mark Mckenna Quoted In The Mac News World Article "Apple Breaks Legal Serve In Samsung’S Home Court.", Mark Mckenna

Mark P. McKenna

Mark McKenna was quoted in the Mac News World article Apple Breaks Legal Serve in Samsung’s Home Court on December 13. "Neither of these companies wants to give an inch because the cumulative effect of these cases is to make it as difficult on each other as possible," Mark McKenna, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, told MacNewsWorld.

Mark Mckenna Quoted In The Guardian Article "Samsung Says $52m, Not $380m, Is Owed For Apple Patent Infringement, Mark Mckenna

Mark P. McKenna

Mark McKenna quoted in The Guardian article by Charles Arthur "Samsung says $52m, not $380m, is owed for Apple patent infringement. “Most cases with these enormous stakes would have settled by now – particularly once the court ordered a new trial on damages, which could substantially increase or decrease the damage award," McKenna said by email. "But once the court took off the table the possibility of an injunction (which would have taken Samsung products off the market), the risk to Samsung was significantly lower, reducing its incentive to settle. And Apple wants something significant to show for its efforts. …

Mark Mckenna Quoted In Ap Article On Apple, Samsung Trial, Mark Mckenna

Mark P. McKenna

Mark McKenna was quoted in the Associated Press article by PAUL ELIAS Apple, Samsung resume court battle over smartphone patents as trial opens in Silicon Valley "Most cases with these enormous stakes would have settled by now — particularly once the court ordered a new trial on damages, which could substantially increase or decrease the damage award," said Notre Dame law school professor Mark McKenna, who specializes in technology. But McKenna said a key incentive for both companies to reach a settlement was removed by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh when she refused to ban U.S. sales of the Samsung …

Trademark Law's Faux Federalism, Mark Mckenna

Mark P. McKenna

Federal and state trademark laws regulate concurrently: The Lanham Act does not preempt state law, and in fact many states have statutorily and/or judicially developed trademark or unfair competition laws of their own. This state of affairs, which is now well-accepted even if it has not always been uncontroversial, distinguishes trademark law from patent and copyright law, since federal patent and copyright statutes preempt state law much more broadly. The Patent Act entirely preempts state law with respect to non-secret inventions and the 1976 Copyright Act preempts state copyright law with respect to all works fixed in a tangible medium …

Apple's Court-Appointed Watchdog May Not Have Much Bite, Joseph Bauer

Joseph P. Bauer

Joe Bauer was quoted in the MacNewsWorld article Apple's Court-Appointed Watchdog May Not Have Much Bite on October 18. "Apple has been bullheaded about this," Joseph P. Bauer, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, told MacNewsWorld. "It's been so uncooperative with the court that the court has reacted a little more harshly than it would with a defendant who said, 'We will violate no more.'" - See more at: http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/Apples-Court-Appointed-Watchdog-May-Not-Have-Much-Bite-79221.html#sthash.WR6UdvAH.dpuf

Strategic Effects Of Three-Part Tariffs Under Oligopoly, Yong Chao

Yong Chao

The distinct element of a three-part tariff, compared with linear pricing or a two-part tariff, is its quantity target within which the marginal price is zero. This quantity target instrument enriches the firm's strategy set in dictating the competition to a specific level, even in the absence of usual price discrimination motive. With general differentiated linear demand system, the competitive effect of a three-part tariff in contrast to linear pricing depends on the degree of substitutability between products: competition is intensified when two products are more differentiated, yet softened when two products are more substitutable.

Increased Market Power As A New Secondary Consideration In Patent Law, Andrew Blair-Stanek

Andrew Blair-Stanek

Courts have developed nine non-technical secondary considerations to help juries and judges in patent litigation decide whether a patent meets the crucial statutory requirement of being non-obvious. This article proposes a new, tenth secondary consideration: increased market power. If a patent measurably increases its holders’ market power, that should weigh in favor of finding the patent non-obvious. This new secondary consideration incorporates the predictive benefits of several existing secondary considerations, while increasing the accuracy and availability of evidence for fact-finders to determine whether a patent is non-obvious.

Retaliatorily Discharged Employees’ Standing To Sue Under The Antitrust Laws, Gary Shaw

Gary M. Shaw

No abstract provided.

Pfizer, Inc. V. India Foreign Sovereigns’ Standing To Sue For Treble Damages, Gary Shaw

Gary M. Shaw

No abstract provided.

Global Justice And International Economic Law: Three Takes, Frank Garcia

Frank J. Garcia

For centuries, international trade has been seen as essential to the wealth and power of nations, and defended as a system through which all could benefit. It is only recently that trade's problematic role as an engine of distributive justice has begun to be understood, due in part to globalization and the global justice debates. In this compelling new book, international legal scholar Frank J. Garcia proposes a radically new way to evaluate, construct, and manage international trade - one that is based on norms of economic justice as well as comparative advantage and national interest. This book examines three …

The Failure Of Corporate Governance Standards And Antitrust Compliance, Jesse Markham

Jesse Markham

This article explores the interplay between corporate governance law and antitrust law, and concludes that fiduciary standards should be strengthened. Part I explains the need for powerful incentives to comply with antitrust laws, given the economic rewards from violations. Part II explores recent trends in antitrust law enforcement to show that violations continue more or less unabated despite major improvements in detection and prosecution of violations. Part III argues why monetary sanctions imposed on corporations should be abandoned as the primary enforcement tool, given that they merely place economic burdens on shareholders who are powerless to intervene ex ante, or …

Towards An Empirical And Theoretical Assessment Of Private Antitrust Enforcement, Joshua Davis, Robert Lande

Joshua P. Davis

The dominant view in the antitrust field is that private enforcement cases, and especially class actions, accomplish little or nothing positive but, on the contrary, are counterproductive. Despite strongly worded convictions, that view has been premised on anecdotal, self-serving and insufficiently substantiated claims. Indeed, the authors' 2008 study of 40 private cases appears to constitute the only systematic effort to gather information about a significant number of private antitrust actions. That study generated a great deal of controversy, including questioning of our conclusions by high officials at the Department of Justice and by Professor Daniel Crane at the University of …

Net Neutrality And Nondiscrimination Norms In Telecommunications, Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons

“Net neutrality” refers to the principle that broadband providers should not discriminate when transporting content and applications over the Internet. After several years of debate, the Federal Communications Commission adopted binding net neutrality rules in December 2010. The cornerstone of this regime is a binding rule that forbids broadband providers from unreasonably discriminating when delivering Internet traffic.The prohibition on unreasonable discrimination has a long pedigree in telecommunications law, and net neutrality proponents have long asserted the need to extend that nondiscrimination norm to cyberspace. But the Commission’s net neutrality rules impose far greater obligations on broadband providers than the law …

Global Justice And International Economic Law: Opportunities And Prospects, Frank Garcia, Chios Carmody, John Linarelli

Frank J. Garcia

No abstract provided.

The Extraordinary Deterrence Of Private Antitrust Enforcement: A Reply To Werden, Hammond, And Barnett, Joshua Davis, Robert Lande

Joshua P. Davis

Our article, "Comparative Deterrence from Private Enforcement and Criminal Enforcement of the U.S. Antitrust Laws," 2011 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 315, documented an extraordinary but usually overlooked fact: private antitrust enforcement deters a significant amount of anticompetitive conduct. Indeed, the article showed that private enforcement "probably" deters even more anticompetitive conduct than the almost universally admired anti-cartel enforcement program of the United States Department of Justice. In a recent issue of Antitrust Bulletin, Gregory J. Werden, Scott D. Hammond, and Belinda A. Barnett challenged our analysis. They asserted that our comparison “is more misleading than informative.” It is unsurprising that they …

Antitrust Class Certification: Towards An Economic Framework, Daniel Rubinfeld

Daniel L. Rubinfeld

No abstract provided.

Summaries Of Twenty Cases Of Successful Private Antitrust Enforcement, Joshua Davis, Robert Lande

Joshua P. Davis

This document summarizes twenty cases of successful private antitrust enforcement. These twenty summaries build on earlier summaries of forty additional cases of successful private enforcement available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1105523. An analysis of the data from the original forty cases is available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1090661 (published as Robert L. Lande and Joshua P. Davis, Benefits From Private Antitrust Enforcement: An Analysis of Forty Cases, 42 U.S.F. L. REV. 879 (2008)) and an argument based on the forty cases that private antitrust enforcement has greater deterrence effects than criminal enforcement by the Department of Justice is available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1565693 (published as Robert L. Lande …

Sailing A Sea Of Doubt: A Critique Of The Rule Of Reason In U.S. Antitrust Law, Jesse W. Markham Jr.

Jesse Markham

The purpose of the article is to offer a critique of the rule of reason, tracing its disintegration from its original articulation 100 years ago in Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U.S. 1, 60 (1911). The article then describes a construct for restoring transparency and content to the rule of reason. The rule of reason is the default standard for assessing restraints under the Sherman Act. The role for the rule of reason has expanded in recent years as the Supreme Court has reversed a number of per se rules, thus relegating additional categories of restraints to the …