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Full-Text Articles in Law
Sector-Specific Competition Enforcement At The Fcc, Jonathan Baker
Sector-Specific Competition Enforcement At The Fcc, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
This comment explains how and why sector-specific enforcement by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) complements generalist competition enforcement by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), to the benefit of competition in the communications industry. It illustrates ways in which a sector-specific agency such as the FCC can foster competition by comparing merger reviews by the FCC and DOJ in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
Equity, Antitrust, And The Reemergence Of The Patent Unenforceability Remedy, Jorge Contreras
Equity, Antitrust, And The Reemergence Of The Patent Unenforceability Remedy, Jorge Contreras
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
The conventional legal analysis of technical standard setting derives primarily from antitrust law. But antitrust remedies, taken alone, may not be broad enough to address recent abuses of the standardization process. The principal example of this shortcoming is the well-known case of Rambus, Inc., which, over the course of several years, was alleged to have concealed relevant patent applications from a standards organization in which it participated and then successfully sued the entire DRAM industry for royalties after the standard was “locked-in.” Remarkably, Rambus prevailed in its litigation campaign despite aggressive enforcement efforts by the Federal Trade Commission. Rambus’s success …
Comcast/Nbcu: The Fcc Provides A Roadmap For Vertical Merger Analysis, Jonathan Baker
Comcast/Nbcu: The Fcc Provides A Roadmap For Vertical Merger Analysis, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
The FCC’s analysis of the Comcast-NBCU transaction fills a gap in the contemporary treatment of vertical mergers by providing a roadmap for courts and litigants addressing the possibility of anticompetitive exclusion. The FCC identified the factors any judicial or administrative tribunal would likely consider today in analyzing whether a vertical merger would lead to anticompetitive input or customer foreclosure, and a range of economic methods potentially relevant to applying that template to the facts of a transaction. Notwithstanding the difference between administrative adjudication under a public interest standard and judicial decision-making under the Clayton Act, the legal framework and economic …
Merger Simulation In An Administrative Context, Jonathan Baker
Merger Simulation In An Administrative Context, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
This article addresses the application of the economic literature on merger simulation to the practical context of antitrust enforcement. It highlights the value of simple simulations as a basis for creating screens and presumptions – particularly the gross upward pricing pressure index for the preliminary review of unilateral effects among sellers of branded consumer products and a presumption based on identifying mavericks for the analysis of coordinated effects – in order to provide guidance to merging firms and judges, who may not have specialized competition policy expertise. The article explains why antitrust agencies should rely on these approaches to identify …