For more than a decade, public policymakers, competition agencies, courts, and government authorities around the world have been developing an increasingly detailed set of rules governing and defining fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms for the licensing of standard-essential patents
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Please stop saying “antitrust protects competition, not competitors.” (Letter to the editor)
Regarding John W. Mayo and Mark Whitener’s March 22 Outlook essay, “Five Myths: Antitrust law”:
The authors concluded by noting that “enforcers and courts tend to take competitors’ complaints about their rivals’ behavior with a grain of salt.” That…
Did We Just Join OPEC? Part 2
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Companies (OPEC) is one of the longest-running and most successful price-fixing cartels in history.
It proved its power in the 1970s by drumming up a “shortage” of oil that resulted in gasoline rationing in the…
Did We Just Join OPEC? Part 1
Sunday’s CNBC headline reads, “OPEC and allies finalize record oil production cut after days of discussion.”
One normally would interpret that headline to mean that OPEC agreed with non-OPEC members Russia, Venezuela, and Mexico on the production cut. One would…
Focusing on efficiency has made antitrust less effective
Over the past several decades, antitrust analysis has become tightly focused on the prices consumers pay as the sole, or at least the primary, measure of consumer welfare. The focus on prices to consumers has in turn led to too…
The Coronavirus Heat-Seeking Missile
Welcome to our “Big Thoughts/Quick Reads” Antitrust Blog. This will be an irregular series. Some posts will be triggered by current issues. Some posts will be triggered by long-settled issues that we think need to be unsettled and reconsidered. All…