Law Commons^™

Running A Different Route: How Youtube Tv Plans To Avoid Antitrust Violations, Brody Shea

SLU Law Journal Online

After reaching a deal this past December, YouTube TV is now the sole option for NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers. By providing out-of-market sports games in a bundled package, YouTube TV runs the risk of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. In this article, Brody Shea addresses how YouTube TV can avoid future litigation.

2022 Mlb Lockout: Time To Re-Examine Baseball's Antitrust Exemption, Adam Renfro

SLU Law Journal Online

In this article, Adam Renfro examines the legal basis for Major League Baseball's antitrust exemption in light of ongoing lockout in Major League Baseball. This article also discusses ongoing and current threats to the exemption and asserts that the exemption should be abolished once and for all.

Taking The Long View On Shorting: Market Manipulation And Gme, Andrew Steiner

SLU Law Journal Online

In this article, Andrew Steiner provides an overview of the events surrounding the GameStop short squeeze coordinated by retail investors on the internet forum WallStreetBets over the last year and the possible legal fallout. While some traditional institutional investors call for regulatory intervention, retail investors have pointed the finger at trading app Robinhood.

Regulatory Malfunctions In The Drug Patent Ecosystem, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

Patent protection for several of the world’s best-selling and most promising drugs — biologics — has begun waning. Over the next few years, many other drugs in this category will lose critical patent protection. In principle, this should open the United States market to competition, as more manufacturers are now able to produce relatively cheaper versions of these expensive drugs, known as biosimilars. That, however, has not been the case. This Article examines this problem in the context of the articulation between anticompetitive behaviors and regulatory interventions in the biopharmaceutical arena, and argues for a novel solution: a timelier response …

Brief Amici Curiae Of Intellectual Property Professors In Support Of Petitioner, No. 18-600, Texas Advanced Optoelectronic Solutions, Inc. V. Renesas Electronics America, Inc., Timothy R. Holbrook, Ann Bartow, Andrew Chin, David C. Hricik, Yvette Joy Liebesman, Lucas Osborn

All Faculty Scholarship

To comply with the obligations of the Uruguay Round Agreements, particularly the Agreement on the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS), Congress amended 35 U.S.C. § 271(a) to make it an act of infringement to “offer to sell” a patented invention within the United States. See Uruguay Round Agreements Act, Pub. L. No. 103-465, §§ 531-533, 108 Stat. 4809 (1994).

The Federal Circuit has interpreted this provision in a manner contrary to the presumption against the extraterritorial reach of United States laws. The Federal Circuit has held that location of the ultimate sale contemplated in the offer controls the …

Ex Parte Seizures Under The Dtsa And The Shift Of Ip Rights Enforcement, Yvette Joy Liebesman

All Faculty Scholarship

The ex parte seizure provision of the Defend Trade Secrets Act is another step in a long line of legislation that shifts the costs of private enforcement to the public, which already has a toehold in copyright and trademark law. The ex parte provision — which is not incorporated into any state trade secret law — relieves rights owners of two “burdens.” First, it relieves the trade secret owner of the burden of actually having to compete in the marketplace. Second, it relieves the trade secret owner of the burden of the costs associated with the discovery process of a …

Rethinking Trademark Functionality As A Question Of Fact, Yvette Joy Liebesman

All Faculty Scholarship

Trade dress functionality stands for a reasonable premise: features which are essential to the use or purpose of an article, which affect the cost or quality of the article, or whose exclusive use would put competitors at a significant non-reputation-related disadvantage, are not protectable as signifiers of source or sponsorship. Functionality has broad implications, as a product’s shape can be its most identifiable feature.

The problems plaguing the functionality doctrine have been examined from a substantive point of view; however until the standard by which functionality is determined is changed, these problems are likely to continue to persist. When adjudicating …

The Mark Of A Resold Good, Yvette Joy Liebesman, Benjamin Wilson

All Faculty Scholarship

Over the past ten years, the Internet has revolutionized the resale market ― casual resellers have migrated from garage sales, swap meets, and classified ads, to eBay and Craigslist, turning hobbies into lucrative businesses. This has affected the sales of new goods and troubled manufacturers, who seek to curtail the growth of this secondary market.

Most of these on-line resales should be protected by the first-sale doctrine, a well-known defense to infringement claims that applies across patent, copyright, and trademark law. Simply stated, once a manufacturer sells a product, it may not interfere with secondary sales of that product. Yet …

When Selling Your Personal Name Mark Extends To Selling Your Soul, Yvette Joy Liebesman

All Faculty Scholarship

Identifying one’s business with one’s personal name has long been a practice in the United States. As Personal Name Marks have become increasingly commodified, however, bargaining and deal-making has led more and more to transfers of rights which had previously been considered to be closely tied to the individual as a private person. This article posits that freedom of contract doctrine should not allow the complete alienation of all aspects of one’s name, but rather there should be limitations on how far parties may bargain, so that the purchaser cannot acquire the right to control the seller’s private activities. This …

Efficiencies In Merger Analysis: Alchemy In The Age Of Empiricism?, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

One is hard-pressed to find in law an undertaking more fraught with uncertainty than the application of the efficiencies defense in merger analysis. Generalist fact finders (judges) and politically-attuned government officials (prosecutors and regulators) are charged with two Herculean tasks: (1) predicting the outcome of organic changes in business enterprises and (2) comparing the magnitude of those changes to the equally uncertain amount of harm to future competition that the transaction will cause. Given the enormous, perhaps intractable, uncertainty of this inquiry, it is therefore paradoxical that many of the strongest advocates for strengthening the role of efficiencies analysis in …

Thirty Years Of Solicitude: Antitrust Law And Physician Cartels, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

Over the last thirty years the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have challenged dozens of physician cartels, networks, and other arrangements that they alleged constituted price fixing or other restraints of trade under the antitrust laws. In addition, the antitrust agencies have issued numerous advisory opinions, published detailed statements of enforcement policy, and made dozens of public statements on the issue of physician collaboration. The puzzle explored in this essay is why the government's deployment of unparalleled enforcement resources has not curtailed physician attempts to engage in collective bargaining and other attempts to restrain price competition. It …

Antitrust & Hospital Mergers: Does The Nonprofit Form Affect Competitive Substance?, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

Following a string of government losses in cases challenging hospital mergers in federal court, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice issued their report on competition in health care seeking to set the record straight on a number of issues that underlie the judiciary's resolution of these cases. One such issue is the import of nonprofit status for applying antitrust law. This essay describes antitrust's role in addressing the consolidation in the hospital sector and the subtle influence that the social function of the nonprofit hospital has had in merger litigation. Noting that the political and social context …

Mission, Margin, And Trust In The Nonprofit Health Care Enterprise, Thomas L. Greaney, Kathleen Boozang

All Faculty Scholarship

The law governing charitable corporations remains neglected and thoroughly muddled. Still unsettled are central issues regarding the accountability of directors and management, legal standards governing organic changes by nonprofit institutions, and mechanisms to ensure fidelity to the organization's charitable mission. For nonprofit corporations in the health care sector, which represent a large proportion of all health services supplied nationwide, particularly charity care, these shortcomings have had serious repercussions. The central issue addressed in this Article is how fidelity to the mission of the charitable health care corporation should be monitored. It advances the normative perspective that the law should maximize …

Chicago's Procrustean Bed: Applying Antitrust Law In Health Care, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

Antitrust enforcement in health care has undergone considerable buffeting in recent years with government agencies losing a string of important cases in federal court and support for vigorous enforcement waning among some policymakers. Critics of doctrinal development in antitrust law have begun to question whether the underlying economic relationships are accurately reflected in the law of antitrust as applied in health care. This article advances the positive claim that antitrust doctrine often suppresses pertinent features of the health care marketplace and urges courts and enforcers to pause before applying precedent and evidentiary rules of thumb that do not fit the …

Whither Antitrust? The Uncertain Future Of Competition Law In Health Care, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

Although instrumental in ushering in competition to the health care industry and later in safeguarding the competitive structure of markets, antitrust law has come under attack. A series of questionable judicial decisions has clouded the standards applicable to analyzing health care markets. Legislative efforts to immunize conduct from antitrust challenge also have gathered support in recent years. This study finds scant economic or policy basis for these developments and concludes that anti-managed sentiments have diluted enthusiasm for applying competitive principles in health care. This phenomenon has resulted in outcome-driven judicial decisions and legislative activity geared to serving political expediency rather …

Antitrust And The Health Care Industry: The View From The Three Branches, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

This article provides a critical appraisal of the summer's three major health care antitrust events. The California Dental Association case, the Justice Department's challenge to the Aetna-Prudential merger, and the proposed Quality Health Care Coalition Act of 1999 are likely to have a significant influence on the trajectory of antitrust enforcement in the coming years. The author argues that the reasoning of these precedents suffers from an over reaction to the managed care bogeyman and a lack of attention to sound antitrust jurisprudence. In a postscript, it finds similar shortcomings with the Eighth Circuit's recent decision in FTC & State …

Night Landings On An Aircraft Carrier: Hospital Mergers And Antitrust Law, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

Abstract: Analysis of the competitive effects of hospital mergers requires antitrust tribunals to make exceedingly fine-tuned appraisals of complex economic relationships. The law requires fact finding in a number of complex areas, e.g., defining product and geographic markets, predicting the possibility of that firms will engage in coordinated behavior; and assessing efficiencies flowing from the merger. Further complicating the process is the fact that these decisions require judgments regarding what the future may hold in an industry undergoing revolutionary change. Like pilots landing at night aboard an aircraft carrier, courts are aiming for a target that is small, shifting and …

Regulating For Efficiency In Health Care Through The Antitrust Laws, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

The need to evaluate the competitive consequences of cooperation among rivals has long posed a dilemma for antitrust enforcement. Collaboration can reduce rivalry, raise prices and otherwise reduce consumer welfare; at the same time cooperation among rivals carries the promise of creating cost savings, correcting market failures and producing other benefits. In many cases antitrust doctrine requires a balancing of the positive and negative effects of coordination. In health care, federal antitrust enforcement agencies have increasingly turned to regulatory tools including policy statements, advisory opinions, speeches and regulatory decrees settling cases to strike this balance. However, the agencies have paid …

Managed Competition, Integrated Delivery Systems And Antitrust, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

A central question confronting proponents of managed competition during the health reform debate in 1994 was whether competitive networks or integrated delivery systems would emerge. Under reformers’ vision, controlling costs depended on the emergence of a sufficient number of efficient and viable integrated delivery systems. Conversely, if one or a few integrated networks dominate the market for physician or hospital services, rivalry on the main issues of health care cost control would likely dissipate. This article argues that vigilant and sensible antitrust enforcement was also a prerequisite for the success of the managed competition model. Despite the considerable emphasis on …

Quality Of Care And Market Failure Defenses In Antitrust Health Care Litigation, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

This article considers quality-based justifications for antitrust challenges to collaboration among health care professionals. It first examines doctrinal developments resisting such justifications and, with a skeptical eye, analyzes attempts to interject quality of care and worthy motive defenses into antitrust appraisals of horizontal restraints of trade. Next the article assesses the economic basis and the risks and benefits of a market failure defense that would allow some quality-enhancing restraints of trade to escape antitrust challenge. Its principle recommendation is that courts recognize a narrow, market failure defense subject to several limiting principles to cabin its reach. The article concludes by …

Competitive Reform In Health Care: The Vulnerable Revolution, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

This article, written at the dawn of the era of "competitive reform" in health care examines the case and prospects for the introduction of competition in health care delivery and financing. It observes the failures of the ancienne regime of fee for service payment and professional sovereignty and discusses the benefits of market-oriented policy. Its contribution, still salient today, is the lesson that competition cannot succeed without regulation. It identifies legislative, professional, and cultural hurdles to effective implementation of competitive norms and policies that have impeded the success of competition policy in health care.