Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

2021: Entering The New Sports Normal, Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

A New Kind Of Pitch: The Rise Of Sports Dedicated Private Equity Funds And The Future Of The Single Entity Defense, Chase Browndorf

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Forced Play: Was The Mlb Commisioner's Decision To Force A 2020 Mlb Season Amid Coronavirus Unenforceable, Or Just A Bad Idea?, Rachel Young

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Treble, Treble Toil And Trouble: The New Per Se Rule As A Protection Against The Curse Of The "Supreme Evil", Seth Konopasek

William & Mary Business Law Review

The Supreme Court has called collusion between firms the “supreme evil” of antitrust. Despite public and private enforcement efforts, collusive firms and the cartels they form cost American consumers billions of dollars a year and undermine the virtues of our free market economy. The Chicago School theory of antitrust enforcement, which has dominated antitrust scholarship, vehemently disapproves of private antitrust actions that enable plaintiffs to recover treble damages. Recent scholarship, however, has rejected the Chicago School’s concerns of overdeterrence and embraced the treble damages remedy. This Note follows the recent scholarship and proposes the New Per Se Rule, which would …

International Antitrust, Nikiforos Iatrou, Brownwyn Roe, Paul Schoff, Katrina Groshinski, Maria Ceclia Andrade, Rafaela P. De Calcena, Eric White, Adam S. Goodman, Peter Wang, Yizhe Zhang, Laurie-Anne Grelier, Peter Camesasca, Aurdlien Condomines, Susanne Zuehlke, Vinod Dhall, Sonam Mathur, Tal Eyal-Boger, Ziv Schwartz, Gerardo Calderon-Villegas, Vassily Rudomino, Ksenia Tarkhova, Roman Vedernikov, Alla Azmukhanova, Heather Irvine, Lara Granville, Jonathan Tickner, Jasvinder Nakhwal, William F. Cavanaugh Jr., Robert P. Lobue, Dierdre A. Mcevoy, Daniel A. Friendman, Jake Walter-Warner

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

A Suggested Revision Of The 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines (July 2021), Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The DOJ/ FTC Vertical Merger Guidelines (VMGs) were adopted by the FTC in June 2020 by a party-line 3-2 party line over the dissent of the Acting Chair. One might expect that the VMGs will be withdrawn and/or revised, now that there is a Democratic majority. Revision is appropriate because the VMGs are both incomplete and overly permissible. This Suggested Revision can aid that process.

Regulation And The Geography Of Inequality, Ganesh Sitaraman, Christopher Serkin, Morgan Ricks

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We live in an era of widening geographic inequality. Around the country, the spread between economically and culturally thriving places and those that are struggling has been increasing. "Superstar" cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Atlanta continue to attract talent and grow, while the economies of other cities and rural areas are left behind. Troublingly, escalating geographic inequality in the United States has arrived hand in hand with serious economic, social, and political problems. Areas that are left behind have not only failed to keep up with their thriving peers; in many ways, they have stagnated and seen …

Deeply Fake, Deeply Disturbing, Deeply Constitutional: Why The First Amendment Likely Protects The Creation Of Pornographic Deepfakes, Bradley Waldstreicher

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Storm Is Brewing: How Federal Ambivalence Regarding Below-Cost Pricing Turns A Blind Eye To Monopoly Risk In The Beer Market, Daniel Croxall

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Large beer manufacturers, known colloquially as “Big Beer,” have been steadily losing market share to small, independent craft breweries. Big Beer wants it market share back, and in some cases will go to great lengths to try to defend its dominance—even anticompetitive conduct. Below-cost pricing is one avenue that presents a risk to independent craft breweries. This Article examines how Big Beer can manipulate the beer market in its favor by engaging in predatory pricing. Further, this Article proposes a solution that could be implemented on a nation-wide scale to curtail Big Beer’s anticompetitive activities with respect to pricing.

Empirical Findings In Need Of A Theory—In Defense Of Institutional Investors, Ittai Paldor

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

In recent years theorists have argued that institutional investors’ diversification harms competition. The theory is that when portfolio firms are cross-owned by institutional investors, managements compete less vigorously than they would have but for the cross ownership. The theory was bolstered by several empirical studies. The supporting empirical studies have been contested on methodological grounds, and some recent empirical studies make contradicting findings. But the theory of competitive harm itself is still considered persuasive. The federal antitrust agencies and competition agencies across the globe have begun to take action against instances of cross ownership based on this theory, in what …

The Growing Monopoly In The Corn Seed Industry: Is It Time For The Government To Interfere?, Bethany K Sumpter

Texas A&M Law Review

How a company conducts business is often a consumer concern. Individuals have accused company after company of monopolistic behavior. These individuals have also criticized the Department of Justice for not stopping a monopoly from forming in a specific industry. An example is the corn seed industry, where stakeholders have accused companies of monopolistic behavior. Recent mergers and acquisitions in the corn seed industry have left fewer companies in control, and because of this consolidation, individuals are urging the government to act. This Comment argues that, while the corn seed industry is on the road to containing a monopoly, the industry …

Potential Competition And Antitrust Analysis: Monopoly Profits Exceed Duopoly Profits, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This short note prepared for an OECD meeting in June 2021 examines several antitrust issues involving analysis of potential competition. While the analysis is not new, it is still useful to collect them together in a unified fashion to show how they are related. In this regard, all the analysis and conclusions flow from the overarching (and obvious) points that exclusionary conduct and agreements that maintain monopoly power very often harm consumers, and that monopoly profits typically exceed the combined duopoly profits earned by the dominant firm and the entrant, if there is successful entry. While this is not inevitably …

Farmer Cooperatives "Take Cover": The Capper-Volstead Exemption Is Under Siege, Donald M. Barnes, Jay L. Levine

Arkansas Law Review

"When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization." There can be little dispute that food production is of vital interest to any nation’s security and economy. For this reason, the United States Congress, like many other legislatures around the world, has accorded special treatment to the agricultural industry, and particularly to farmers. One example of this special treatment is the Capper-Volstead Act, which provides farmers with immunity from antitrust liability for joint conduct undertaken by and through an “association” of producers.

The Probative Synergy Of Plus Factors In Price-Fixing Litigation, Christopher R. Leslie

Northwestern University Law Review

Private plaintiffs alleging that defendants conspired to fix prices in violation of antitrust law must usually prove their claims through circumstantial evidence, generally in the form of “plus factors”—evidence indicating that the defendants’ parallel conduct was caused by collusion, not by independent decision-making. Supreme Court precedent requires fact finders to examine antitrust plaintiffs’ evidence holistically. With increasing frequency, however, federal courts in price-fixing cases improperly isolate each piece of circumstantial evidence presented by the plaintiff and then deprive it of all probative value because that single piece of evidence is insufficient, standing alone, to prove a price-fixing conspiracy. As a …

Note: Improving The Defend Trade Secrets Act Of 2016: Against Preempting State Trade Secret Law, Victoria Hanson

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

In order to better protect companies from losing their valuable trade secrets and prevent irreparable harm, Congress enacted the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA),8 the first federal civil protection given for trade secrets. In this paper, I argue that the DTSA has indeed not met its supposed goals, but the solution does not lie in preempting state law. Firstly, I explain the history, goals, and provisions of the DTSA and how it has failed to meet the original goals over the past three years. Secondly, I explain the argument for the DTSA to preempt state law and its …

Patents And Price Fixing By Serial Colluders, William E. Kovacic, Robert C. Marshall, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

Antitrust law has long been mindful of the danger that firms may misuse their patents to facilitate price fixing. Courts and commentators addressing this danger have assumed that patent-facilitated price fixing occurs in a single market. In this Article, we extend conventional analysis to address firms’ patent misuse to facilitate price fixing across multiple products lines. By doing so, we expose gaps in existing agency enforcement and scholarly proposals for reform. Important legal tests that make sense in the single market setting do not carry over to the context we call serial collusion, where certain offenders engage in repeat collusion …

Taking It With You: Platform Barriers To Entry And The Limits Of Data Portability, Gabriel Nicholas

Michigan Technology Law Review

Policymakers are faced with a vexing problem: how to increase competition in a tech sector dominated by a few giants. One answer proposed and adopted by regulators in the United States and abroad is to require large platforms to allow consumers to move their data from one platform to another, an approach known as data portability. Facebook, Google, Apple, and other major tech companies have enthusiastically supported data portability through their own technical and political initiatives. Today, data portability has taken hold as one of the go-to solutions to address the tech industry’s competition concerns.

This Article argues that despite …

Leaving Judicial Review With The Judiciary: The Misplaced Role Of Agency Deference In Tunney Act Public Interest Review, Alexandra P. Clark

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Note explores the Tunney Act’s mechanism for judicial review of consent decrees negotiated by the U.S. Department of Justice and merging parties to remedy alleged antitrust issues. The Tunney Act requires that the reviewing court only approve a consent decree if it is “in the public interest.” This Note argues, however, that courts have improperly circumscribed their review by affording too much deference to the Department of Justice when reviewing these consent decrees. This deference subverts Congress’s intent in imposing judicial review and allows the government and merging parties the opportunity to skirt meaningful judicial review. As such, this …

A Tale Of Two Regulators: Antitrust Implications Of Progressive Decentralization In Blockchain Platforms, Evan Miller

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Competition regulators have identified the potential for blockchain technology to disrupt traditional sponsor-led platforms, like app stores, that have received increased antitrust scrutiny. Enforcement actions by securities regulators, however, have forced blockchain-based platforms to adopt a strategy of progressive decentralization, delaying decentralization objectives in favor of the centralized model that competition regulators hope they will disrupt. This regulatory tension, and the implications for blockchain’s procompetitive potential, have yet to be explored. This Article first identifies the origin of this tension and its consequences through a competition law lens, and then recommends that competition regulators account for this tension in monitoring …

Social Justice In Law, Society And Development: A Marxism Perspective Of Indonesian Case, Ridwan Arifin, Vania Shafira Yuniar

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

This article explores about social justice in peoples lives according to Karl Marxs prespective of the concept of social class. It also discusses Marxs concept of the struggle of the social class to provide a solution for the proletariat, to free themselves from the chain of cruelty, violence and alienation in the capitalist system to achieve social justice. The essence of social justice in Karl Marxs prespective is that if a society has created a manifestation of self through compassion, and the collaboration of a classless society, without violence, and without oppression, and humans are free from all forms of …