Law Commons^™

The Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law: New Developments And Empirical Evidence, Michael Faure, Xinzhu Zhang, Susan Farmer

Susan Beth Farmer

Beth Farmer contributed the following chapter: "Competition Policy in China: Trends in Private Civil Litigation"

Effective enforcement of competition laws and regulations benefits society, consumers and market participants, and promotes a competition culture. Private civil actions can contribute to healthy economic development (AML Article 1), consumer welfare, and economic efficiency and more complete and effective enforcement of competition law. This chapter discusses developments in private civil actions under the Chinese AML in the context of recent Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court, national development goals, and the experience of four years of active civil litigation. A spokesperson of the Intellectual …

Monopoly Sports Leagues, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

This Article argues that the government should break up both Major League Baseball and the NFL to provide for competing economic entities in each sport. Part I details the harm monopoly sports leagues cause in several different markets and explains why a competitive league structure can correct such harms. Part II discusses why regulatory solutions are poor substitutes for competition as a means of redressing these harms. Part III explains why neither baseball nor football is a "natural monopoly" and argues that no persuasive evidence suggests that rival leagues cannot exist in those sports. Part IV examines how the antitrust …

The Supreme Court's Renewed Focus On Inefficiently Structured Joint Ventures, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

Antitrust courts and commentators have long appreciated that joint ventures among rival firms have the potential to provide benefits to consumers and the economy through synergies and economies of scale, but also raise the potential of lessening competition among the venture principals. The case law and academic literature have often ignored, however, the potential harm that befalls consumers when joint ventures with market power are structured in a manner that gives the principals the ability to direct policy and a strategy in a manner that advances their parochial self-interest, rather than the interests of the venture-as-a-whole. The Supreme Court's recent …

The Misunderstood Alliance Between Sports Fans, Players, And The Antitrust Laws, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

The baseball strike and the ongoing hostilities between the players' association and owners have evoked criticism and frustration among fans and others. Although the players successfully defeated the owners' most recent attempts to reduce major league competition, the threat of future imposition of competitive restraints by the owners remains. In this article Professor Stephen F. Ross argues that blanket restraints on the market for players affirmatively inhibit on-the-field competition and consequently offend the Sherman Act. The article begins with the proposition that monopsony - price-fixing behavior by buyers', rather than sellers' cartels - implicates the Sherman Act. Restraints on competition …

Sports And The Law: Text, Cases, And Problems, 5th, Stephen Ross, Paul Weiler, Gary Roberts, Roger Abrams

Stephen F Ross

This casebook introduces students to the fundamentals of labor, antitrust, and intellectual property law as applied in the professional and amateur sporting industries. It covers the unique office of the league commissioner and special concerns with the “best interests of sports”; the contract, antitrust, and labor law dimensions of the player-labor market; the peculiar institution of the player agent in a unionized industry; the economic and legal implications of agreements among league owners and responses to rival leagues; the system of commercialized college athletics governed by the NCAA and how law impacts individual sports like golf, tennis and boxing; as …

Reconsidering Flood V. Kuhn, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

Within the academia, two very different groups of legal scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to Flood v. Kuhn. Those specializing in sports law have either attached Flood as a ridiculous decision that improperly distinguished between baseball and other professional sports, or have praised it for waging guerrilla warfare on the idea that Section 1 of the Sherman Act should apply to intra-league arrangements by owners of the professional sports teams. Those viewing Flood through the lens of statutory interpretation perceive the decision as adhering rigidly to the principle of stare decisis; this rigidity has been both praised …

Reaganist Realism Comes To Detriot, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

Part I of this article discusses Detroit Newspapers and explains how in deferring to the Attorney General's interpretation of the Newspaper Preservation Act, Judge Silberman disregarded every applicable technique of statutory interpretation typically used to resolve the issue. Indeed, each of these techniques suggests that Attorney General Meese's interpretation of the Act was incorrect. This part of the article also demonstrates why deference to Meese was particularly inappropriate in light of the generally accepted justifications for judicial deference to administrative interpretations of statutes.

Part II explains that Detroit Newspapers is one of several opinions by conservative Reagan judicial appointees that …

An Antitrust Analysis Of Sports League Contracts With Cable Networks, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

This Article discusses the proper antitrust treatment of package sales to cable. Part I considers whether the antitrust laws apply at all to such sales; it concludes that section one of the Sherman Act does apply and that neither the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 not baseball's historic exemption from the antitrust laws prevents antitrust scrutiny of these contracts. Part II explains why cable package sales should be analyzed under a rule of reason test focused on the effect of a sale on fan viewership. Finally, Part III responds to several possible objections to the rule of reason standard proposed …

Antitrust Options To Redress Anticompetitive Restraints And Monopolistic Practices By Professional Sports Leagues, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

The hallmark of an antitrust violation is an agreement which has the effect of raising price, lowering output, or rendering output unresponsive to consumer demand. Owners of clubs comprising Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League engage in a variety of exploitative activities that consumers cannot avoid by substituting rival products. The purpose of this Article is to analyze specific areas where these monopoly sports leagues harm a variety of groups, through the maintenance of a monopolistic structure that precludes competitive entry, or through specific restraints that have demonstrable anticompetitive effects. …

Accommodating Labor And Antitrust, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

In this article, the author comments on Professor Michael LeRoy's article "Federal Jurisdiction in Sports Labor Disputes" (2012 Utah L. Rev. 815) and explains why he disagrees with the claim that federal courts improperly invoke the Sherman Act in sports labor disputes.

A Regulatory Solution To Better Promote The Educational Values And Economic Sustainability Of Intercollegiate Athletics, Stephen Ross, Matt Mitten

Stephen F Ross

Currently there are several pending antitrust suits challenging NCAA rules restricting the economic benefits intercollegiate athletes may receive for their sports participation. Although remedying the inherent problems of commercialized college sports (primarily Division I football and men’s basketball) is a laudable objective, a free market solution mandated by antitrust law may have unintended adverse consequences. Judicial invalidation of these rules may inhibit universities from providing many athletes with a college education they would not otherwise receive, by eliminating or reducing the value of scholarships for many players whose economic value is less than the cost of an education. A wholly …

Experimental Economics And Antitrust: What Can We Learn From Laboratory Markets?, Bart Wilson

Bart J Wilson

No abstract provided.

Confucianism And Antitrust: China's Emerging Evolutionary Approach To Anti-Monopoly Law, Thomas J. Horton

Thomas J. Horton

In August, 2007, the People’s Republic of China, through its National People’s Congress, enacted its Anti-Monopoly Law, which took effect in August, 2008. This article discusses the historical, cultural, and philosophical values that have helped to shape and influence China’s current AML. Rather than following the United States and Europe, China appears to be charting its own course in interpreting and enforcing its competition laws. Based upon China’s history, culture, and Confucian ethics and morals, this article forecasts that China’s future AML enforcement will be based upon social, moral, and ethical considerations, as well as economic ones. This article concludes …

Chapters On North Dakota And South Dakota, Thomas Horton

Thomas J. Horton

These volumes sets forth the substantive civil and criminal case law, procedure, practice, and statutes in separate chapters for each of the 50 states.

The Gao 500: Effects Of Non-Practicing Entities On Patent Litigation, Robin C. Feldman, Sara Jeruss, Joshua Walker

Robin C Feldman

Any discussion of flaws in the United States patent system inevitably turns to the system’s modern villain: non-practicing entities, known more colorfully as patent trolls. For many years, however, discussions about non practicing entities have been long on speculation and short on data.

In 2011 Congress directed the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office to study the effects of non-practicing entities on patent litigation. Our study was performed at the request of the GAO, examining patent lawsuits filed over the past five years. The data confirm in a dramatic fashion what many scholars and commentators have suspected: patent monetization entities play a …

Corporate Governance And Competition Policy, Spencer Weber Waller

Spencer Weber Waller

Corporate Governance and Competition Policy

Spencer Weber Waller

Abstract

Corporate governance law addresses the misaligned incentives between officers and directors of publicly-owned companies and their shareholders, and how this can lead to the destruction of shareholder value. Antitrust law governs the interaction between corporations and other economic actors in the marketplace and prohibits and penalizes anticompetitive agreements, unilateral conduct which unreasonably injures competition, and mergers and acquisitions which may substantially lessen competition.

This article explores the puzzling lack of meaningful interaction between these two fields of law which govern the internal and external operations of key economic players in our …

Antitrust And Associations Handbook (Contributing Author), Thomas Horton

Thomas J. Horton

No abstract provided.

The Cfi Microsoft Judgment And Trips Competition Flexibilities, Hans Henrik Lidgard

Hans Henrik Lidgard

No abstract provided.

The Chicago School Virus, Spencer Weber Waller

Spencer Weber Waller

The Chicago School of Law and Economics is a leading example of a highly successful legal ideology. As one recent commentator has noted: "[T]he basic characteristic of the Chicago School is the belief that free markets and the price mechanism are the most effective and desirable ways for a society to organize production and economic life in general." The Chicago School of Law and Economics applies these insights to legal questions and views the creation and enforcement of legal rules primarily in terms of how legal rules and institutions promote allocative efficiency and wealth maximization.

While much ink has been …

Categorical Analysis In Antitrust Jurisprudence (With M. Lemley), Christopher Leslie

Christopher R. Leslie

No abstract provided.

Technological Convergence And Competition On The Edge - „Emerging Markets“ And Their Regulation, Andrea Stazi

Andrea Stazi

Technological convergence, on the one hand, tends to point out new roles - and sometimes also markets - for the players in the communications industry, producing the segmentation of different functions and phases in the value chain. On the other hand, technological convergence could bring forth numerous specific antitrust issues, such as an increase in the market power of the suppliers of more appealing services or contents, or a premature foreclosure of the new market due to leveraging of the power maintained by a company in another market. A topic of particular interest, till now quite neglected by legal doctrine, …

Tying Conspiracies, Christopher Leslie

Christopher R. Leslie

No abstract provided.

Antitrust Damages And Deadweight Loss (Symposium), Christopher Leslie

Christopher R. Leslie

No abstract provided.

Antitrust Amnesty, Game Theory, And Cartel Stability, Christopher R. Leslie

Christopher R. Leslie

This paper reviews, and proposes revisions to, the government's Corporate Leniency Policy, which confers leniency upon the first member of a price-fixing cartel to expose the illegal activity to the DOJ's Antitrust Division. Three important limitations apply. First, the ringleader of the cartel is ineligible for immunity. Second, leniency is not automatic if the government has its own internal investigation significantly underway. Third, a firm must confess "promptly" in order to qualify for amnesty. This paper proposes doing away with these limitations. It may seem counter-intuitive to enact policies that make it easier for the worst antitrust criminals to escape …

The Anticompetitive Effects Of Unenforced Invalid Patents, Christopher R. Leslie

Christopher R. Leslie

Antitrust law and patent law assume that an invalid patent cannot distort competition unless the patentee enforces the patent by initiating infringement litigation or explicitly threatening to do so. The Article argues that invalid patents can destroy competition - even without such enforcement efforts - by creating legitimate fears of litigation, increasing the costs of market entry, delaying market entry, scaring away competitors' customers and business partners, and deterring research. Despite the anticompetitive risks posed by invalid patents, neither patent law nor antitrust law does an effective job of ridding the marketplace of invalid patents. In particular, because antitrust law …

The Case For International Antitrust, Andrew Guzman

Andrew T Guzman

No abstract provided.

Unilaterally Imposed Tying Arrangements And Antitrust's Concerted Action Requirement, Christopher Leslie

Christopher R. Leslie

No abstract provided.