Law Commons^™

Race-Ing Antitrust, I. Bennett Capers, Gregory Day

Faculty Scholarship

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 …

Patents And Small Participants In The Smartphone Industry, Joel R. Reidenberg, N. Cameron Russell, Maxim Price, Anand Mohand

Faculty Scholarship

For intellectual property law and policy, the impact that patent rights may have on the ability of small companies to compete in the Smartphone market is a critically important issue for continued robust innovation. Open and competitive markets provide vitality for the development of Smartphone technologies. Nevertheless, the impact of patent rights on the smart phone industry is an unexplored area of empirical research. Thus, this Article seeks to show how patent rights affect the ability of small participants to enter, compete, and exit smart phone markets. The study collected and used comprehensive empirical data on patent grants, venture funding, …

Google And Search-Engine Market Power, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

A significant and growing body of commentary considers whether possible manipulation of search results by Google could give rise to antitrust liability. Surprisingly, though, little serious attention has been paid to whether Google has market power. Those who favor antitrust scrutiny of Google generally cite its large market share, from which they infer or assume its dominance. Those who are skeptical of competition law’s role in regulating search, on the other hand, usually cite Google’s 'competition is only a click away' mantra to suggest that Google’s market position is precarious. In fact, the issue of Google’s power is more complicated …

Leveraging Information About Patents: Settlements, Portfolios, And Holdups, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this essay is twofold. First, it serves to emphasize the role played by uncertainty in three otherwise very different categories of cases, involving “reverse payment” settlements, patent portfolios and package licensing, and deception in standard-setting. The source of the uncertainty at issue in each of the cases is different, but in each the unavailable information is not protected by patent law. Second, the essay points out that in these cases the courts nevertheless apply rules that are more appropriate for the information about inventions that patent law is intended to protect. Patent law grants patentees the exclusive …

The Statutory Ucc: Interpretative License And Duty Under Article 2, Nicholas J. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Patent Settlements, Risk, And Competition, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

PowerPoint presentation delivered at the session, Patent Settlements: The Issues Beyond the "Reverse Payment" Cases at the ABA 59th Annual Antitrust Spring Meeting, March 30, 2011.

Standardization Of Standard-Form Contracts: Competition And Contract Implications, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

Standard-form contracts are a common feature of commercial relationships because they offer the advantage of lower transaction costs. This advantage of standard contracts is increased when there is a second layer of standardization under which multiple firms agree on a standard contract. Trade associations and similar entities often effect standardization of this kind through collective agreement on a standard contract, sometimes under the aegis of state actors. Multifirm contract standardization can provide not only the usual transaction-cost advantages of standard-form contracts, but also increased competition among firms, because a standard contract makes comparison among firms’ offerings easier. But standardization among …

Antitrust And The Supremacy Clause , Richard Squire

Faculty Scholarship

In the course of damning the market giant Standard Oil, the Supreme Court declared that the purpose of the Sherman Antitrust Act is to prevent "monopoly and the acts which produce the same result as monopoly." The Constitution's Supremacy Clause, in turn, requires preemption-that is, non-enforcement--of state laws that conflict with a federal statute. Put together, these propositions suggest that state laws which create monopolies should be prime candidates for preemption via the Sherman Act. But despite the syllogistic logic bearing down on them, monopoly-creating state laws have easily weathered most federal antitrust challenges, even when the state does not …

Antitrust And The Costs Of Standard-Setting: A Commentary On Teece & (And) Sherry Symposium: The Interface Between Intellectual Property Law And Antitrust Law: Commentary, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

The creation of an industry standard is a process that has much in common with the creation of a patented invention. Indeed, if standards are not patentable, it is only because of certain doctrinal peculiarities of patent law. It is therefore important to preserve the incentives for organizations to incur the costs of standard-setting activity, so that society may gain the benefits of the resulting standards. The law can preserve those incentives by treating the contributions of industry standards as distinct from those of inventions that are incorporated in them. More specifically, antitrust law should ensure that the patentees of …

Market Power Requirement In Antitrust Rule Of Reason Cases: A Rhetorical History, The, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

The requirement that an antitrust plaintiff show market power in rule of reason cases has an uninspiring history and unconvincing justifications. Such a requirement has never been adopted by the Supreme Court, and is currently imposed by only the Seventh and Fourth Circuits. Indeed, the requirement was never imposed very widely, despite frequent claims to the contrary. More significantly, the Seventh Circuit cases that initially established the requirement, and that continue to be cited for it, did so with misleading citations to cases from other circuits. Furthermore, the justifications that have been offered for the requirement have generally been either …

When Is Property Intellectual: The Leveraging Problem Essays, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

Patents and copyrights protect inventions and expression; they do not protect products. This distinction, I argue in this essay, is a key to the antitrust problem of the "leveraging" of intellectual property. In a typical leveraging case, the manufacturer of a durable good, like a copier or computer, refuses to sell replacement parts for its equipment unless the purchaser also hires the manufacturer to service the equipment. Such a practice can be illegal under antitrust law, but when the leveraging products-in this example, replacement parts-are protected by patent or copyright, the manufacturer will often claim that the leveraging is a …

Product Definition, Product Information, And Market Power: Kodak In Perspective, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

In Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services, Inc., product information, market costs, market information the United States Supreme Court held that market power sufficient to impose an illegal tying arrangement can, at least in theory, derive from buyers' uncertainty regarding a product's costs and quality. Although commentators disagree on the implications of the Kodak decision, all seem to agree that the opinion's emphasis on product information costs is a departure from previously accepted economic analysis of antitrust law. In this Article, Mark R. Patterson argues that the Kodak decision is, in fact, economically reasonable, incorporating into antitrust law previously …

Antitrust Implications Of Professional Sports Leagues Revisited: Emerging Trends In The Modern Era, The , Thane Rosenbaum

Faculty Scholarship

In a nation where sports entertainment is such a vital part of the American experience, it is somewhat surprising that the precise law governing the relationship between professional sports leagues and the Sherman Act is so noticeably confused and unsettled. Those who have sought uniformity in this area of law and scholarship had hoped to achieve some level of consistency between the highly developed principles embodied in traditional antitrust law, and that which seems to have evolved in the sports entertainment industry. What has remained from this academic if not athletic exercise is certainly not coherence, but rather a series …

Competitive Process And Gray Market Goods, The , Jacqueline Nolan-Haley

Faculty Scholarship

Although it has the appearance of benefiting the consumer, the phenomenon of gray market goods is, for the most part, a species of unfair competition. Where an exclusive distribution contract between foreign and domestic entities enhances interbrand competition and satisfies a rule of reason analysis, it should be considered a protectable property interest. There is little justification for permitting gray market imports to interfere with that interest by taking advantage of the good will associated with the distribution, marketing, warranties and servicing provided by the United States distributor. The antitrust goal of promoting long-run consumer interests is not advanced by …

Trigger Price Mechanism: Protecting Competition Or Competitors, The , Jacqueline Nolan-Haley

Faculty Scholarship

The International Trade Commission asserted that for most of 1978 and probably for the indefinite future, the TPM was "the greatest single factor influencing the conditions of competition" in the U.S. steel industry. The precise contours of this influence are uncertain. While it is premature to assess adequately the economic impact of the TPM, it is possible to make some observations vis-a-vis our national antitrust policy goals. The TPM, like the steel VRA's of 1972, has had no discernable impact on increasing efficiency through expansion, modernization or development of domestic steel-making technology. The TPM, however, does have an impact on …