Law Commons^™

Trademarks: German Manufacturer’S Deliberate Infringement Of Domestic Trademark Sufficient To Support Injunctive Relief, But Not Supportive Of Award For Damages, Kimley R. Johnson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Deepwater Port Act Of 1974: Some International And Environmental Implications, James H. Gnann Jr.

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Beyond Trade Deals: Charting A Post-Brexit Course For Uk Investment Treaties, Lise Johnson, Lorenzo Cotula

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The Brexit referendum has raised questions about the future terms of the United Kingdom’s engagement with the world economy. While a debate over the UK’s future approach to trade deals has already begun, a similar discussion has yet to develop on the treaties that govern foreign investment. As this briefing note by Lorenzo Cotula of the International Institute for Environment and Development, and Lise Johnson of CCSI highlights, the stakes are high: ill-designed treaties could leave the UK excessively exposed to legal claims by foreign companies and could fail to address relevant economic, social and environmental challenges. While meaningful negotiations …

China’S Withdrawal Of Article 96 Of The Cisg: A Roadmap For The United States And China To Reconsider Withdrawing The Article 95 Reservation, Pan Zhen

University of Miami Business Law Review

The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) was created for the purpose of providing legal neutrality and certainty, and also for the purpose of avoiding choice of law issues in international sales of goods. However, the United States and China, the two largest trading nations in the world, made the Article 95 reservation at the time they ratified the CISG, therefore restricting CISG’s applicability in certain situations. In 2013, China withdrew its Article 96 reservation, which declares its non-recognition of free form of contract formation, taking one step closer to the vast majority of …

Other Markets, Other Costs: Modernizing Antitrust, Jeffrey L. Harrison

UF Law Faculty Publications

Today’s antitrust law is characterized by stagnation and indeterminacy. The failure is so thorough that it is not clear that U.S. competition law actually leads to any outcomes that are defendable except at the most superficial level. Moreover, when enforcement does result in a desirable outcome, it not clear that it is the best outcome. The principal reason for this state of affairs is that antitrust scholars and courts cling to misguided goals and theories that have not evolved despite an avalanche of information now available that can modernize the discipline.

This Article has two main sections that necessarily overlap. …

State-Action Immunity And Section 5 Of The Ftc Act, Daniel A. Crane, Adam Hester

Michigan Law Review

The state-action immunity doctrine of Parker v. Brown immunizes anticompetitive state regulations from preemption by federal antitrust law so long as the state takes conspicuous ownership of its anticompetitive policy. In its 1943 Parker decision, the Supreme Court justified this doctrine, observing that no evidence of a congressional will to preempt state law appears in the Sherman Act’s legislative history or context. In addition, commentators generally assume that the New Deal court was anxious to avoid re-entangling the federal judiciary in Lochner-style substantive due process analysis. The Supreme Court has observed, without deciding, that the Federal Trade Commission might …

The United States, Developing Countries And The Issue Of Intra-Enterprise Agreements, Joel Davidow

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

Antitrust issues have become one of the main concern of the world economy community and the United Nations. For many years, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has multiplied the meetings to discuss the relationship between transnational enterprises and international investment and has engaged in reflections on methods to avoid a decline in international investment. However, these meetings failed to resolve the fundamental issue of the impact of international antitrust principles on restrictive arrangements between a foreign parent corporation and its local subsidiary, particularly where that subsidiary is in a developing country. If applied, multinational enterprises would be …

The Nba's Deal With The Devil: The Antitrust Implications Of The 1999 Nba-Nbpa Collective Bargaining Agreement Note, Dan Messeloff

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Article 422: A Retrospective On Ecuador's 2008 Constitutional Isds Recalibration, Alexander B. Avtgis

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

Is Ecuador’s adoption of Article 422 in the 2008 Constitution properly viewed as a “re-statification”1 of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)? And, since its implementation, has the constitutional article been effective in institutionally insulating Ecuador from the jurisdictional reach of international ISDS? This paper answers both questions in the negative—but qualifies such an outlook by balancing the drawbacks of Article 422 against its successes. Article 422’s provisions, strident in its attempt to create an alternative development vision, did not achieve all that the Constitution’s drafters had hoped. Nevertheless, in its limited effect of detaching Ecuador from certain ISDS fora, it …

More Than Just A Toothache? N.C. Dental Leaves Medical Boards Vulnerable: A Look At Telemedicine Companies And Antitrust Challenges To State Prescription Drug Rules, Alexander R. Kalyniuk

William & Mary Business Law Review

Encouraged by technological advancements and favorable provisions within the Affordable Care Act, telemedicine companies that offer online doctor visits are thriving in the health care industry. Online doctor visits are a relatively new and cost-efficient method to provide medical care over long distances that do not require patients to step outside their homes. However, many state medical board scope-of-practice rules prohibit physicians from prescribing medications without an in-person physical examination of the patient, which impedes telemedicine companies from offering their online services in those states. To circumvent this barrier, telemedicine companies may have a prima facie case under § 1 …

Open Source, Modular Platforms, And The Challenge Of Fragmentation, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Open source and modular platforms represent two powerful conceptual paradigms that have fundamentally transformed the software industry. While generally regarded complementary, the freedom inherent in open source rests in uneasy tension with the strict structural requirements required by modularity theory. In particular, third party providers can produce noncompliant components, and excessive experimentation can fragment the platform in ways that reduce its economic benefits for end users and app providers and force app providers to spend resources customizing their code for each variant. The classic solutions to these problems are to rely on some form of testing to ensure that the …

Product Hopping: A New Framework, Michael A. Carrier, Steve D. Shadowen

Notre Dame Law Review

One of the most misunderstood and anticompetitive business behaviors in today’s economy is “product hopping,” which occurs when a brand-name pharmaceutical company switches from one version of a drug to another. These switches, benign in appearance but not necessarily in effect, can significantly decrease consumer welfare, impairing competition from generic drugs to an extent that greatly exceeds any gains from the “improved” branded product.

The antitrust analysis of product hopping is nuanced. It implicates the intersection of antitrust law, patent law, the Hatch-Waxman Act, and state drug product selection laws. In fact, the behavior is even more complex because it …

The Role Of Design Choice In Intellectual Property And Antitrust Law, Stacey Dogan

Faculty Scholarship

When is it appropriate for courts to second-guess decisions of private actors in shaping their business models, designing their networks, and configuring the (otherwise non-infringing) products that they offer to their customers? This theme appears periodically but persistently in intellectual property and antitrust, especially in disputes involving networks and technology. In both contexts, courts routinely invoke what I call a “non-interference principle” — the presumption that market forces ordinarily bring the best outcomes for consumers, and that courts and regulators should not meddle in the process. This non-interference principle means, for example, that intermediaries need not design their networks to …

Federal Antitrust Law : A Treatise On The Antitrust Laws Of The United States, Joseph P. Bauer, Earl W. Kintner., William P. Kratzke

Joseph P. Bauer

No abstract provided.

The Mascot Manifesto, Zachary S. O'Driscoll

Learning Showcase 2016: A Celebration of Discovery, Transformation and Success

My law review article analyzes the constitutionality of the Lanham Act, a federal trademark statute. Under the Lanham Act, trademark owners are prohibited from registering trademarks that may be considered ''disparaging'' or ''scandalous'' to others. However, what is considered ''disparaging'' or ''scandalous'' is determined under a subjective standard. What is offensive to one trademark examiner for purposes of registering a trademark may not be offensive to another. Today, the Washington Redskins, a professional football franchise, finds themselves at the heart of the Lanham Act controversy. But underlying this trademark litigation is a deeper concern: whether the Lanham Act itself is …

A Brave Attempt: Can The National Collegiate Athletic Association Sanction Colleges And Universities With Native American Mascots?, Kenneth B. Franklin

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

The Failed Superiority Experiment, Christine P. Bartholomew

Journal Articles

Federal law requires a class action be “superior to alternative methods for fairly and efficiently adjudicating the controversy.” This superiority requirement has gone unstudied, despite existing for half a century. This Article undertakes a comprehensive review of the superiority case law. It reveals a jurisprudence riddled with inconsistency as courts adopt diametrically opposed interpretations of the requirement. Originally crafted to encourage predictable, consistent class action decisions, superiority has mutated over the years into a dangerous wild card—subjectively used to stymie aggregate litigation. The solution is not adding a new requirement to the already onerous rules for class certification. Instead, judges …

Antitrust Jurisprudence In The Second Circuit, Saul P. Morgenstern, Jennifer B. Patterson, Terri A. Mazur

Fordham Law Review

A running thread through Second Circuit antitrust jurisprudence is a willingness to examine market participants’ real-world conduct and the consequences of that conduct in seeking out the balance between incentivizing robust competition and protecting the market—and ultimately consumers—from distortions caused by anticompetitive conduct. This Article collects and describes rulings that reflect such themes in Second Circuit antitrust jurisprudence. The court’s long history in this substantive space, its likely continued exposure to critical antitrust questions, and the importance of this area of the law to our national economy assure that others will be examining and shedding further light on the Second …

Economic Law, Inequality, And Hidden Hierarchies On The Eu Internal Market, Damjan Kukovec

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article has several aims. First, the aim is to show the continuing importance and relevance of antitrust and international trade lawyers in countering the concentration of power in the hands of the few or in some geographic areas of the world, if some of the assumptions of antitrust and trade are adjusted. Second, the goal is to articulate a particular analysis from the perspective of the (European) periphery. As the recent Euro crises and the near exit of Greece from the Union show, the European prospect of development for all has not arrived. This Article will articulate the privilege …

Modifying Merger Consent Decrees To Improve Merger Enforcement Policy, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article analyzes my short proposal for reviewing and modifying merger consent decrees to permit additional relief if the provisions of the initial consent merger are found to fail to preserve or restore competition in a reasonable period of time after the merger was consummated. My proposal also would involve more frequent reviews of consummated mergers that have been cleared without challenge, particularly those that were close calls. While “Don't Look Back” might be the best anthem for artists, economic decision theory would not support that approach to merger policy.

Predicting the impact of proposed mergers and remedies on consumers …

The Customer Is Not Always Right: Balancing Worker And Customer Welfare In Antitrust Law, Clayton J. Masterman

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note analyzes how courts' leniency affects a particular category of anticompetitive buyer conduct: agreements between employers that restrict competition in labor markets. If, as courts and commentators generally agree, the goal of antitrust law is to promote the welfare of consumers, how should courts balance the welfare of workers and customers under antitrust analysis? Arguably, worker welfare should be included in consumer welfare. If so, anticompetitive agreements between employers benefit one subset of consumers (customers), while hurting another subset (workers). The persistent procustomer and antiworker effect of such complicates a court's choice to find conduct per se unreasonable or …

Uncertainty And Reverse Payments, Ramsi Woodcock

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The current approach to “reverse payment” settlements of drug patent litigation seeks to preclude only those settlements guaranteed to harm consumers, rather than all that could harm them. Antitrust tolerates the possibility of harm in order to give firms the freedom to make settlements that might benefit consumers, relative to what courts would achieve under patent law. Antitrust’s mission is not, however, to improve upon outcomes under patent law, but rather to prevent harm to consumers. Accordingly, antitrust must minimize the possibility of harm, even if that precludes the chance of gain. I show that a ban on all settlements …

Do Patent Challenges Increase Competition?, Stephen Yelderman

Journal Articles

This Article is the first to seriously scrutinize the claim that patent challenges lead to increased competition. It identifies a number of conditions that must hold for a patent challenge to provide this particular benefit, and evaluates the reasonableness of assuming that the pro-competitive benefits of patent challenges are generally available. As it turns out, there are a number of ways these conditions can and regularly do fail. This Article synthesizes legal doctrine, recent empirical scholarship, and several novel case studies to identify categories of challenges in which the potential benefits for competition are smaller than previously thought or, in …

The Tbt Agreement’S Failure To Solve U.S. - Cool, Elinore R. Carroll

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

A Priate's Treasure?: Heightened Pleadings Standard For Copyright Infringement Complaints After Bell Atlantic Corp. V. Twombly, Benjamin W. Cheesbro

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Antitrust And Intellectual Property: A Brief Introduction, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

Intellectual property law and antitrust have been described as conflicting bodies of law, and the reason is easy to see. Antitrust law aims to protect consumers from the consequences of monopolization. Intellectual property law seeks to enhance incentives to innovate by granting monopolies in ideas or expressions of ideas. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the purported conflict between antitrust and intellectual property. The chapter is largely descriptive, and focuses on current or developing litigation rather than historical controversies. Many of the modern examples of conflict can be attributed to problems of classification.

The Hidden Costs Of Free Goods: Implications For Antitrust Enforcement, Michal S. Gal, Daniel L. Rubinfeld

Daniel L. Rubinfeld

Today a growing number of goods and services are provided in the marketplace free of charge; indeed, free or the appearance of free, have become part of our ecosystem. More often than not, free goods and services provide real benefits to consumers and are clearly pro-competitive. Yet free goods may also create significant costs. We show that despite the fact that the consumer does not pay a direct price, there are indirect prices that reflect the opportunity cost associated with the consumption of free goods. These indirect costs can be overt or covert, in the same market in which the …

Shareholder Wealth Maximization As Means To An End, Robert P. Bartlett, Iii

Robert Bartlett

In several recent cases, the Delaware Chancery Court has emphasized that where a conflict of interest exists between holders of a company’s common stock and holders of its preferred stock, the standard of conduct for directors requires that they strive to maximize the value of the corporation for the benefit of its common stockholders rather than for its preferred stockholders. This article interrogates this view of directors’ fiduciary duties from the perspective of incomplete contracting theory. Building on the seminal work of Sanford Grossman and Oliver Hart, incomplete contracting theory examines the critical role of corporate control rights for addressing …

So Now Who Is Special?: Business Model Shifts Among Firms That Borrow To Lend, José Gabilondo

José Gabilondo

No abstract provided.

Financial Hospitals: Defending The Fed’S Role As A Market Maker Of Last Resort, José Gabilondo

José Gabilondo

During the last financial crisis, what should the Federal Reserve (the Fed) have done when lenders stopped making loans, even to borrowers with sterling credit and strong collateral? Because the central bank is the last resort for funding, the conventional answer had been to lend freely at a penalty rate against good collateral, as Walter Bagehot suggested in 1873 about the Bank of England. Acting thus as a lender of last resort, the central bank will keep solvent banks liquid but let insolvent banks go out of business, as they should. The Fed tried this, but when the conventional wisdom …