Law Commons^™

Jurisdiction Beyond Our Borders: United States V. Alcoa And The Extraterritorial Reach Of American Antitrust, 1909–1945, Laura Phillips Sawyer

Scholarly Works

Chapter in the book Antimonopoly and American Democracy by Daniel A. Crane and William J. Novak, eds., Oxford University Press, 2023.

In 1945, Judge Learned Hand wrote one of the most influential opinions in modern antitrust law. In declaring that the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) had illegally monopolized the industry for virgin aluminum and had participated in an illegal international cartel, Hand both revived and extended American antitrust law. The ruling is famous for several reasons: it narrowly defined the relevant market in favor of the government; it expanded the category of impermissible dominant firm conduct; it interpreted congressional …

Anticompetitive Merger Review, Samuel N. Weinstein

Georgia Law Review

U.S. antitrust law empowers enforcers to review pending mergers that might undermine competition. But there is growing evidence that the merger-review regime is failing to perform its core procompetitive function. Industry concentration and the power of dominant firms are increasing across key sectors of the economy. In response, progressive advocates of more aggressive antitrust interventions have critiqued the substantive merger-review standard, arguing that it is too friendly to merging firms. This Article traces the problem to a different source: the merger-review process itself. The growing length of reviews, the competitive restrictions merger agreements place on acquisition targets during review, and …

Recovering Contingency Within American Antimonopoly And Democracy, Laura Phillips-Sawyer

Scholarly Works

*This is the fourth post in a symposium on William Novak’s New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State. For other posts in the series, click here.

In his chapter on antitrust law and the American antimonopoly tradition, the penultimate substantive chapter of the book, Novak covers much familiar ground. Yet, he is not focused on the conventional areas of debate in antitrust history, which have included recovering the congressional intent behind the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, recreating the economic logic of early antitrust jurisprudence, or surveying the doctrinal shift from “literalism” to the rule of …

Race-Ing Antitrust, Bennett Capers, Greg Day

Scholarly Works

Antitrust law has a race problem. To spot an antitrust violation, courts inquire into whether an act has degraded consumer welfare. Since anticompetitive practices are often assumed to enhance consumer welfare, antitrust offenses are rarely found. Key to this framework is that antitrust treats all consumers monolithically; that consumers are differently situated, especially along lines of race, simply is ignored.

We argue that antitrust law must disaggregate the term “consumer” to include those who disproportionately suffer from anticompetitive practices via a community welfare standard. As a starting point, we demonstrate that anticompetitive conduct has specifically been used as a tool …

Big Tech In A Small Pond: How The Internet Economy Became So Concentrated And What Sector-Specific Regulation Can Do To Reel It In, Andy Wilson

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

While the early days of the internet were marked by a proliferation of new internet platforms offering different services, over time much of the sector became dominated by the handful of internet giants we know today. Discomfort with the outsized role that these enormous companies play in the daily lives of billions has driven a growing consensus that they need to be reined in, culminating in federal and state agencies launching a slew of antitrust suits against Google and Facebook in late 2020. These renewed antitrust efforts will likely be insufficient to address competitive harms in the internet economy, given …

Voting Trusts And Antitrust: Rethinking The Role Of Shareholder Litigation In Public Regulation, From The 1880s To The 1930s, Laura Phillips Sawyer, Naomi R. Lamoreaux

Scholarly Works

In 1903 the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) bought a majority interest in the Kellogg Switchboard and Supply Company, allegedly with the aim of eliminating competition in the telephone business. Perhaps it is not remarkable that the Illinois Supreme Court ruled this acquisition of an Illinois corporation to be illegal. What is noteworthy, however, is that the court took this step at the behest of a group of Kellogg’s minority shareholders who had filed suit to block the deal. Judges had long responded skeptically to such actions, worried that shareholders would clog the courts with challenges to managers’ decisions …

Redeeming The Supreme Court: The Structure Behind The Baseball Trilogy And The Scope Of The Baseball Antitrust Exemption, Christian L. Neufeldt

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

This article conducts a systematic, methodological, and historical analysis of the baseball trilogy to elucidate its underlying structure. It adds to the existing scholarship by analyzing the later decisions in the context of their predecessors and exposing the interplay within the baseball trilogy. As a result, this article argues, against nearly universal opposition, that the Supreme Court issued well-considered opinions in each case and created a logical structure that underlies the entire trilogy. This article then scrutinizes the different approaches taken by the lower courts to delimitate the baseball antitrust exemption. It uses its structural findings on the baseball trilogy …

Speech, Innovation, And Competition, Greg Day

Scholarly Works

Critics contend that concentrated power in digital markets has generated threats to free speech. For a variety of reasons, market power is naturally thought to concentrate in digital markets. The consequence is that “big tech” is said to face little competition; Facebook controls 72 percent of the social media market while the parent of YouTube (72 percent of the video market) is Google (92 percent of the search market). This landscape has potentially vested private companies with unprecedented power over the flow of information. If Facebook, for example, decides to ban certain types of speech or ideas, it would potentially …

Gulf Airline Subsidization: Should The European Union And The United States Collaborate To Combat This Alleged Threat?, Savannah H. Moon

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Infracompetitive Privacy, Greg Day, Abbey R. Stemler

Scholarly Works

One of the chief anticompetitive effects of modern business lies in antitrust’s blind spot. Platform-based companies (“platforms”) have innovated a business model whereby they offer consumers “free" and low-priced services in exchange for their personal information. With this data, platforms can design products, target consumers, and sell such information to third parties. The problem is that platforms can inflict greater costs on users and markets in the form of lost privacy than efficiencies generated from their low prices. Consumers, as examples, spend billions of dollars annually to remedy privacy breaches and, alarmingly, participate unwittingly in experiments designed to manipulate their …

Trade Association, State Building, And The Sherman Act: The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce, 1912-25, Laura Phillips Sawyer

Scholarly Works

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce (USCC), and "organization of organizations," was conceived in 1912 in coordination with administrators at the Department of Commerce and Labor to promote the collection of commercially valuable trade information. A critical though often neglected, aspect of administrative state building has been the information-gathering and dissemination practices spearheaded by the Department of Commerce and later the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in conjunction with the USCC. Rather than a strictly adversarial relationship, in the early twentieth century business-government relations created mutually constitutive administrative capacities in both private trade associations and public administrative agencies.

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.

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 …

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 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.

The Trade Act Of 1974: Soviet-American Commercial Relations And The Future, Kenneth Klein

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Book Review: International Licensing Agreements. Edited By Gótz M. Pollzien And Eugen Langen. Indianapolis And New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 2d Ed. 1971. Pp. Xlvi, 593. $35.00., William M. Poole

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Foreign Commerce And The Antitrust Laws. By Wilbur L. Fugate. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 2d Ed. 1973. Pp Xxv, 491. $35.00., Paul P. Harbrecht

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

First Steps In Building An Intellectual Property Program And Portfolio, Jeffrey D. Sullivan

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Confusion Codified: Why Trademark Remedies Make No Sense, Mark A. Thurmon

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

The Judicial Role In Extraterritorial Application Of The Securities Exchange Act Of 1934: Vesco, William A. Aileo

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Comment: Blocked Assets And Private Claims: The Initial Barriers To Trade Negotiations Between The United States And China, John J. Fitzpatrick Jr., Toby B. Prodgers

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Proper Reach Of Territorial Jurisdiction: A Case Study Of Divergent Attitudes, Philippe Schreiber

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Proper Reach Of Territorial Jurisdiction: A Case Study Of Divergent Attitudes, Robert Y. Jennings

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Network Effects In Technology Markets: Applying The Lessons Of Intel And Microsoft To Future Clashes Between Antitrust And Intellectual Property, John T. Soma, Kevin B. Davis

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Copyright Misuse And The Limits Of The Intellectual Property Monopoly, Aaron Xavier Fellmeth

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments And Future Prospects Of The Common Market, Michael Waelbroeck

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

California Fair Trade: Antitrust And The Politics Of “Fairness” In U.S. Competition Policy, Laura Phillips Sawyer

Scholarly Works

In the decades before World War II, U.S. antitrust law was anything but settled. Considerable pressure for antitrust revision came from the states. A perhaps unlikely leader, Edna Gleason, organized California’s retail pharmacists and coordinated trade networks to monitor and enforce Resale Price Maintenance (RPM) contracts, a system of price-fixing, then known as “fair trade.” Progressive jurists, including Louis Brandeis and institutional economist E. R. A. Seligman, supported RPM as a protection to independent proprietors. The breakdown of legal and economic consensus regarding what constituted “unfair competition” allowed businesspeople to act as intermediaries between heterodox economic thought and contested antitrust …