Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

The Landscape Of Collective Management Schemes, Daniel J. Gervais

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Collective management comes in many shapes and sizes. There is, however, an interesting definition proposed by WIPO: [T]he term “collective management” only refers to those forms of joint exercise of rights where there are truly “collectivized” aspects (such as tariffs, licensing conditions and distribution rules); where there is an organized community behind it; where the management is carried out on behalf of such a community; and where the organization serves collective objectives beyond merely carrying out the tasks of rights management . . . . In contrast, “rights clearance organizations” are those which perform joint exercise of rights without any …

Amicus Briefs And The Sherman Act: Why Antitrust Needs A New Deal, Rebecca Haw Allensworth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Power to interpret the Sherman Act, and thus power to make broad changes to antitrust policy, is currently vested in the Supreme Court. But reevaluation of existing competition rules requires economic evidence, which the Court cannot gather on its own, and technical economic savvy, which it lacks. To compensate for these deficiencies, the Court has turned to amicus briefs to supply the economic information and reasoning behind its recent changes to antitrust policy. This Article argues that such reliance on amicus briefs makes Supreme Court antitrust adjudication analogous to administrative notice-and-comment rulemaking. When the Court pays careful attention to economic …

The Firm As Cartel Manager, Herbert Hovenkamp, Christopher R. Leslie

Vanderbilt Law Review

Antitrust law is the primary legal obstacle to price fixing, which is condemned by Section One of the Sherman Act. Section One condemns only concerted action between separate entities, not unilateral conduct by a single entity. Firms that engage in price fixing may try to reduce the risk of antitrust liability by structuring their actions to appear to be those of a unified single entity that is beyond the reach of Section One.

In this Article, Professors Hovenkamp and Leslie examine how price-fixing cartels govern themselves and maximize their profits by cooperating and colluding, instead of competing. They then use …

Silence Of The Spam: Improving The Can-Spam Act By Including An Expanded Private Cause Of Action, David J. Rutenberg

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In the last decade, email spam has become more than just an annoyance for email users. Unsolicited messages now comprise more than 95 percent of all email sent worldwide. This costs US businesses billions of dollars in lost productivity each year. The US Congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to regulate the spam industry. Unfortunately, data show that spam only increased since the Act's passage. Part of the reason for this failure is that the Act only authorizes the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, and Internet Service Providers to bring action under its provisions. Each of these authorized …

Optimizing Private Antitrust Enforcement, Daniel A. Crane

Vanderbilt Law Review

Private litigation is the predominant means of antitrust enforcement in the United States. Other jurisdictions around the world are increasingly implementing private enforcement models. Private enforcement is usually justified on either compensation or deterrence grounds. While the choice between these two goals matters, private litigation is not very effective at advancing either one. Compensation fails because the true economic victims of most antitrust violations are usually downstream consumers who are too numerous and remote to locate and compensate. Deterrence is ineffective because the time lag between the planning of the violation and the legal judgment day is usually so long …

Did Trinko Really Kill Antitrust Price Squeeze Claims?, Caroline C. Rudaz

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article presents a critical analysis of the Linkline case that refuses to recognize price squeeze claims as antitrust claims under § 2 of the Sherman Act. It argues that Linkline gives a distorted reading of Trinko without giving proper attention to the application of § 2 of the Sherman Act. The Linkline decision takes a dogmatic position and thus, while refuting the Alcoa decision, appears to be a missed opportunity to more precisely define price squeezing.

This Article offers a comparison between the U.S. Supreme Court's decision and the recent European decisions delivered in broadband access cases that are …

A Tale Of Two Theories Of Well-Known Marks, Leah C. Grinvald

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The well-known marks doctrine presents a conundrum in international trademark law. Although protecting foreign well-known trademarks has been a treaty obligation since 1925, courts around the world, and in the United States and China in particular, do not uniformly apply the doctrine. This lack of uniform protection leads to the question of whether these countries are complying with their international obligations. While brand owners and some commentators would answer this question in the negative, this Article provides a different perspective. This Article offers an alternative approach to answering the compliance question: Before considering the question, one must examine the perspective …

The Dragon In The Room: China's Anti-Monopoly Law And International Merger Review, Christopher Hamp-Lyons

Vanderbilt Law Review

In a world where mergers affect every corner of the planet, any government seeking competitive markets has an interest in ensuring that these mergers are not harmful to competition. As China, the world's most populous country, has committed to a market economy, it has now taken the momentous step of enacting its own Anti- Monopoly Law ("AML"). This effects a dramatic change in the antitrust regulation of multinational mergers. In international antitrust, even subtle legal differences between jurisdictions create significant potential for conflict. For this reason, the advent of antitrust merger review by a country with such massive international economic …

The Trojan Horse Of Electric Power Transmission Line Siting Authority, Jim A. Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Reform proposals pending in the U.S. Congress would increase federal and regional power to preempt states in siting transmission lines on order to allow the development of a high-voltage transmission grid for renewable resources. This Article recognizes the inadequacy of existing state siting authority over transmission, but takes a skeptical approach to expanding federal siting jurisdiction as a solution to the problem and argues that the over-attention to transmission line siting authority is a bit of a Trojan horse in the climate change debate. Specifically, because it ignores the more difficult issues of how the costs and benefits of transmission …

Solidifying The Defensive Line: The Nfl Network's Current Position Under Antitrust Law And How It Can Be Improved, Ethan Flatt

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In the United States, the broadcasting of professional sporting events is a multi-billion dollar industry, and the National Football League (NFL) alone earned more than $3 billion from television contracts during its 2008 season. Considering the massive revenues that broadcast rights can generate, it is no surprise that some major professional sports leagues have recently developed their own television networks. While it was not the first league-owned television network, the NFL Network has certainly generated the most attention. Since it started broadcasting a select number of NFL regular season games in 2006, the NFL Network has been subject to media …

Why The Filed Rate Doctrine Should Not Imply Blanket Judicial Deference To Regulatory Agencies, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The filed rate doctrine is a venerable doctrine of public utility regulation. Federal courts applying the doctrine frequently defer to the regulatory agency and refuse to consider the merits of alleged violations of antitrust, tort or contract claims where resolution would require a departure from a filed rate. For over a century, the filed rate doctrine has served many important purposes. However, with increased attention to market-based approaches to electric power, natural gas and telecommunications regulation, there is reason to question both the doctrine's continued applicability and usefulness. This short essay argues that, as regulators implement competitive markets in utility …

Wringing Songwriters Dry: Negative Consequences Of Compulsory Licensing For Ringtones, Daniel H. Mark

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

On October 16, 2006, the United States Copyright Office concluded in a Memorandum Opinion (the Ringtone Opinion) that, subject to certain caveats, the Copyright Act's § 115 statutory license applies to ringtones. The Copyright Office concluded that ringtones (including monophonic and polyphonic ringtones, as well as mastertones) are phonorecords, and deliveries of ringtones by wire or wireless transmission constitute digital phonorecord deliveries subject to compulsory licensing under § 115.2

In the Ringtone Opinion, the Copyright Office provided a testto determine whether a particular ringtone will qualify for thestatutory compulsory license under § 115. The opinion noted that...

"whether a particular …

Antitrust Process And Vertical Deference: Judicial Review Of State Regulatory Inaction, Jim A. Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Courts struggle with the tension between national competition laws, on the one hand, and state and local regulation, on the other--especially as traditional governmental functions are privatized and as economic regulation advances beyond its traditional role to address market monitoring. This Article defends a process-based account of the antitrust state-action exception against alternative interpretations, such as the substantive efficiency-preemption approach that Richard Squire recently advanced, and it elaborates on what such a process-based account would entail for courts addressing the role of state economic regulation as a defense in antitrust cases. It recasts the debate as focused around delegation issues …

Hit And Miss: Leverage, Sacrifice, And Refusal To Deal In The Supreme Court Decision In Trinko, Nicholas Economides

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Under the rules of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, incumbent local exchange carriers, including Verizon, were obligated to lease parts of their local telecommunications network to any firm, at "cost plus a reasonable profit" prices, that could combine them at will, add retailing services, and sell local telecommunication service as a rival to the incumbent. AT&T, an entrant into the local telecommunications market, leased parts of Verizon's network. Curtis Trinko, a local telecommunications services customer of AT&T, sued Verizon, alleging various anti-competitive actions of Verizon against AT&T, including that Verizon raised the costs of AT&T, its downstream retail rival. The …

In Search Of A Unifying Principle For Article V Of The Uniform Trust Code: A Response To Professor Danforth, Jeffrey Schoenblum

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Professor Robert Danforth's exploration of spendthrift trusts in Article Five of the UTC and the Future of Creditors 'Rights in Trusts is a superb piece of work. Professor Danforth analyzes with considerable acuity the ins and outs of the specific rights creditors and beneficiaries of trusts have under the Uniform Trust Code (UTC). His article clearly represents the most detailed analysis of the new Code's approach to spendthrift trusts. Professor Danforth is determined to establish that Article V is not as creditor-friendly as its critics claim.2 His article is essentially an apologia, coupled with some proposed modifications so as to …

In Defense Of Regulatory Peer Review, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The debate over application of peer review to the regulatory decisions of administrative agencies has heated up in the last year. Part of the larger and controversial sound science movement, mandating peer review for certain types of agency decisions has recently been championed by the White House and proponents in Congress. Indeed, this past January the Office of Management and Budget finalized guidelines requiring peer review for large classes of agency activities. These initiatives have not gone unchallenged, and a fierce debate has resulted between those who claim peer review will strengthen the scientific basis of agency decisions and those …

As Soft As Tofu: Consumer Product Defamation On The Chinese Internet, Elizabeth Spahn

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article examines the most notorious Chinese internet defamation case, Wang Hong v. Maxstation, which awarded substantial damages against an individual consumer as well as two online magazines for criticizing a laptop product on the internet. The case created a widespread political controversy on the internet in China, highlighting an underlying tension in the current policies of the Chinese government, which promotes a more open market economy while maintaining tight censorship over public speech. The case developed landmark legal doctrine in China, extending judge made defamation law while ignoring the Chinese consumer protection statute. Extending defamation doctrine to include factual …

The Demise Of Regulation In Ocean Shipping, Chris Sagers

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Over its 140 year history, ocean liner shipping has almost always enjoyed an antitrust exemption permitting price-fixing cartels of ocean carriers. The exemption was premised on the belief that problems of cost and capacity inherent in the trade can be resolved only by horizontal collusion. Now that that exemption has been whittled away by deregulatory efforts, the pre- and post-deregulation evidence presents one of the world's rare opportunities for natural experiment on the behavior and effectiveness of collusive cartel pricing.

Moreover, because normal and effective competition never really existed prior to 1998, the normative foundation of the antitrust exemption was …

Harold Maier, Comity, And The Foreign Relations Restatement, Andreas F. Lowenfeld

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Hal Maier's career and mine have interacted in several respects. We have both served in the Legal Adviser's Office of the State Department; we have both taught Conflict of Laws as well as International Law; and we have both tried to show--I believe successfully--that there is no sharp divide between "Public International Law" and "Private International Law." In particular, we have both been interested in the reach and limits of economic regulation across international frontiers, initially in connection with antitrust and securities regulation, but also in connection with economic sanctions, pollution controls, and other interactions of governmental and private activity. …

"Did You Want Fries With That?" The Unanswered Question Of Federal Product Placement Regulation, Raghu Seshadri

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This note argues that the structure of existing FCC and FTC regulatory regimes is not effective in addressing challenges posed by certain types of product placement. Thus, a specific disclosure requirement targeting non-visual product placement is needed. Part I presents an overview of the existing federal regulatory structure governing product placement, and the current arguments for and against affirmative disclosure requirements. Parts II and III identify the various categories of product placement and argue that non-visual placement presents unique challenges that are absent in other categories of product placement. Finally, Part IV argues that the current regulatory regime is insufficient, …

Moving Public Law Out Of The Deference Trap In Regulated Industries, Jim M. Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article argues that public law has fallen into what I call a deference trap in addressing conflicts in deregulated industries, such as telecommunications and electric power. The deference trap describes a judicial reluctance to intervene in disputes involving political institutions, such as regulatory agencies and states. By reassessing the deference trap across the legal doctrines that are effecting emerging telecommunications and electric power markets, public law can deliver much more for deregulated markets. The deference trap poses a particular cost as markets are deregulated, one that may not have been present during previous regulatory eras in which public and …

Political Bargaining And Judicial Intervention In Constitutional And Antitrust Federalism, Jim A. Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Federal judicial deference to state and local regulation is at the center of contentious debates regarding the implementation of competition policy. This Article invokes a political process bargaining framework to develop a principled approach for addressing the appropriate level of judicial intervention under the dormant commerce clause and state action immunity from antitrust enforcement. Using illustrations from network industries, it is argued that, at core, these two independent doctrines share a common concern with political (not only market) failure by focusing on the incentives faced by powerful stakeholders in state and local lawmaking. More important, they share the common purpose …

Revenue Sharing In Major League Baseball: Are Cuba's Political Managers On Their Way Over Too?, Matthew R. Mccarthy

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In response to a growing disparity amongst the league's best and worst teams, fans, reporters, and even some players have proposed various plans designed to share revenues amongst owners and level the economic playing field. The smaller market teams claim they cannot compete because they have less revenue than the bigger teams, which translates to an inability to pay for high priced players and state-of-the-art facilities. In response to this perceived problem, owners have proposed and implemented some limited forms of revenue sharing and a competitive balance tax...

Part II of this Note examines the history of professional baseball's exemption …

Upon Further Review: Why The Nfl May Not Be Free After Clarett, And Why Professional Sports May Be Free From Antitrust Law, Darren W. Dummit

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This note begins by reviewing the Jewel Tea line of cases that theoretically serve as the starting point for any non-statutory exemption discussion, followed by brief overviews of the contrasting Wood and Mackey lines of cases. The background section then turns to a summary of Brown--the latest Supreme Court decision relating to the collective bargaining process in professional sports--followed by a brief discussion of the NFL eligibility rule and how it differs from the recently-enacted NBA eligibility rule, which is of unquestioned legality. Finally, both the District Court and Court of Appeals decisions in Clarett are summarized.

The analysis begins …

Old Man And The Sky: The Brazilian Antitrust Implications For Rupert Murdoch's Expansion Of The Sky Global Satellite Network, Geoffrey Drake

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

To expand its global satellite network to the United States, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation purchased DirecTV in 2003. Brazil's antitrust regulatory body, CADE, has expressed concern about a potential monopoly in the Brazilian satellite market controlled by Murdoch because News' Sky Latin America competes directly with DirecTV. If News opts to combine the two Brazilian satellite services, it will consolidate control of ninety-five percent of Brazil's satellite market, leaving satellite and cable competitors at a disadvantage. The Author argues that CADE should conditionally approve the acquisition because of the combination's ability to benefit Brazilian consumers, the government, and News Corporation …

Lowering The Filed Tariff Shield: Judicial Enforcement For A Deregulatory Era, Jim A. Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The filed tariff doctrine, fashioned by courts to protect consumers from rate discrimination, has strayed from its origins. Instead of protecting consumers, the doctrine has evolved into a shield for regulated firms against common law and antitrust claims that reinforce market norms. In the ideal world, Congress would expand the jurisdiction of regulatory agencies to allow them to penalize private misconduct. However, since that has not always happened, the filed tariff doctrine has encouraged private firms to expend resources in using the regulator as a strategy to immunize conduct from antitrust and common law antitrust claims. This Article assesses how …

Resolving The Patent-Antitrust Paradox Through Tripartite Innovation, Michael A. Carrier

Vanderbilt Law Review

The issues presented by-the intersection of the patent system and the antitrust laws have never been as pressing as they are today. The number of issued patents is skyrocketing. Companies are more frequently entering into arrangements with competitors not only to recover their investment from creating patented products but also to avoid the patent landmines that line the path of innovation. They form patent pools for laser eye surgery, MPEG-2 video compression technology, and DVD formatting; enter into alliances, mergers, and settlements in the biopharmaceutical industry; refuse to license their patented products in various industries; and cross-license their patents in …

Beyond Goldwasser: Ex Post Judicial Enforcement In Deregulated Markets, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Regulatory agencies are increasingly adopting ex ante rules to set market access terms and conditions for network industries. At the same time, in industries such as telecommunications and electric power transmission and distribution, antitrust laws play an important role in defining the terms and conditions of market access. Courts may have an important ex post enforcement role to play in the enforcement of the antitrust laws. In this Essay, I address the filed rate doctrine - a legal principle that determines when courts, rather than regulatory agencies, may serve as a standard-setter for or arbiter of market terms, independent of …

The Return Of Timberlane?: The Fifth Circuit Signals A Return To Restrictive Notions Of Extraterritorial Antitrust, William J. Tuttle

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Over the past 100 years, the United States has remained ambivalent regarding the potential extraterritorial application of its antitrust laws. The executive, legislative, and judicial branches began with a doctrine of strict territoriality but promptly shifted toward an examination of the effects of the antitrust activity on U.S. commerce. Since the 1970s, the branches of government have refrained the question as one of statutory interpretation, embraced considerations of international comity, modified those considerations, and eventually rejected many of those same considerations.

Throughout this chaos, however, the results reached by the various branches of government have typically been consistent with the …

The Natural Law Basis Of Legal Obligation: International Antitrust And Opec In Context, Joel B. Moore

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) stabilizes petroleum prices to promote the economic prosperity of its member nations for which oil is a substantial export. Price stabilization influences the price of petroleum around the world, impacting the economies of developed and developing countries. Under U.S. antitrust jurisprudence, the OPEC quota agreements that stabilize prices would likely be declared illegal, and other countries might also declare price fixing to be illegal under their respective competition laws.

Several U.S. Senators have recently proposed that price fixing should be illegal under international law as well. This Note avoids a superficial analysis …