Slides on Horizontal Agreements

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:49:31 GMT

Here’s a set of slides discussing horizontal agreements under U.S. law. Eventually, this set will grow to encompass the EU and other jurisdictions.

Thoughts on LinkLine

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:45:59 GMT

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Pacific Bell Telephone Company v. LinkLine Communications, Inc. on December 8th. (Briefs can be found here.) The court rushed to grant cert on a case that is on appeals from a 12(b)(6) motion; the facts haven’t been fully developed, leaving (for example) the question [...]

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Pacific Bell Telephone Company v. LinkLine Communications, Inc. on December 8th. (Briefs can be found here.) The court rushed to grant cert on a case that is on appeals from a 12(b)(6) motion; the facts haven’t been fully developed, leaving (for example) the question of market definition open—do DSL services compete with satellite and cable? I predict that the Supreme Court will regard the case as an opportunity to extend the reach of Brooke Group, thereby further limiting Section 2 liability and abolishing price squeezes as a theory of liability, and to reinforce the message in Trinko that antitrust law takes a backseat to regulation, even imperfect regulation.

First, the facts. LinkLine is an internet service provider (ISP), which sells its customers DSL access. It purchases wholesale DSL access from AT&T California (formerly SBC, formerly Pacific Bell), which is the incumbent local exchange carrier (or ILEC) and required under the Telecommunications Act to provide wholesale DSL access to ISPs. AT&T is vertically integrated and also sells DSL services and ISP services at retail. LinkLine claims that the difference between the price at which AT&T sells wholesale DSL services and the price of AT&T’s retail DSL/ISP is such that LinkLine cannot compete at retail with AT&T. This is the classic price squeeze allegation first formulated by in Alcoa. The (so far uncontested) allegation is that at times AT&T’s retail price was below the wholesale price for DSL access charged to LinkLine.

Depending on how you look at it, the problem is either that AT&T’s wholesale rate is too high, or that the retail price is too low. The wholesale price is subject to regulation and regulatory oversight. The retail price isn’t; but a retail DSL price that is too low points to a Brooke Group-style predatory pricing claim. The District court, granting leave to file an interlocutory appeal from its denial of the 12(b)(6) motion, certified the following question to the Ninth Circuit:

“The issue before the Ninth Circuit will not be whether Trinko bars price-squeeze claims generally but, more specifically, whether it bars predatory price-squeeze claims (i.e., price-squeeze claims which comply with the Brooke Group requirements).”

The Ninth Circuit affirmed. By the time the Supreme Court granted cert (the Solicitor General was in favor, the FTC opposed), the issue became this:

Whether a plaintiff states a claim under § 2 of the Sherman Act by alleging that the defendant—a vertically integrated retail competitor with an alleged monopoly at the wholesale level but no antitrust duty to provide the wholesale input to competitors—engaged in a “price squeeze” by leaving insufficient margin between wholesale and retail prices to allow the plaintiff to compete.

The case raise two issues: Should there be a price squeeze theory of liability under §2? And does Trinko preclude liability in this case because there is regulation in place that controls the wholesale price AT&T can charge as the ILEC?

The Ninth Circuit, in an elegantly reasoned opinion (pdf), argued that Trinko does not preclude liability. It is well known that the Trinko decision is a bit schizophrenic since it first acknowledges the fact that the Telecommunications Act explicitly does not replace antitrust liability. By the end of the Trinko decision, however, the Supreme Court holds that antitrust liability is precluded by the existence of regulation, for two reasons: The claim in Trinko was novel and the TelCo Act did not contemplate an expansion (or preemption) of antitrust liability, and the presence of a regulatory structure designed to deter and remedy anti-competitive harm together with the cost of false positives counsels against expanding the reach of §2. Applying this test, the Ninth Circuit finds that a price-squeeze claim is a traditional antitrust theory of liability going back to Alcoa, and that the regulatory structure at work in the LinkLine case is not “designed to deter and remedy anti-competitive harm” because it operates only on wholesale level but not on the retail level. Here is a graphic summary of the argument:

While I am sympathetic to the Ninth Circuit’s argument, I doubt that the Supreme Court will buy it. It’s an antitrust commonplace these days that putting courts in the position of setting or approving prices is a bad idea. This will be grounds enough for the Supreme Court to further tighten the Trinko holding, I believe: the Court will hold that even incomplete regulation precludes antitrust liability. This approach makes me uneasy. The LinkLine case shows that price regulation at only one level (wholesale or retail) provides an opportunity for the vertically-integrated competitor to distort competition to the detriment of its competitors, whose costs it controls, at least partially. That is not to say that I am entirely comfortable with a court imposing §2 liability here. I also would rather avoid thrusting the courts in a position of approving prices. But wouldn’t the threat of §2 liability, even imperfectly administered, have a salutory effect on the behavior of vertically-integrated monopolists?

The second issue is the price squeeze. The theory flows from United States v. Aluminum Co. of America (1945) and Town of Concord v. Boston Edison Co. (1990). Judge Learned Hand in Alcoa identified four elements of a price squeeze claim: (1) monopoly power; (2) the monopolist charges a wholesale price that is higher than a “fair price;” (3) the monopolist competes downstream (that is, is vertically-integrated); and (4) the monopolist’s downstream or retail price is so low that competitors cannot match it and still earn “a living profit.” Two things about this test make me shudder. First, the thought that courts will need to adjudicate what a “fair” wholesale price is, and second that the Alcoa test is not connected to the question whether the monopolist has a duty to deal with its competitors. It seems obvious that, if the monopolist has no duty to deal at all with a (downstream) competitor, it cannot have a duty to deal at a particular price if it chooses to sell to the downstream competition. Charging “high” wholesale prices is economically equivalent to an outright refusal to deal, and it should not lead to liability absent a duty to deal at the wholesale level.

This is the point of departure for the DoJ in it’s brief favoring reversal of the Ninth Circuit: AT&T had no antitrust duty to deal with LinkLine. True, there was a regulatory duty to deal under the TelCo Act, but since that wasn’t an antitrust duty to deal, it should be ignored and the case decided as if there were no duty to deal at all, according to the DoJ. This line of reasoning has a certain logical elegance, and it builds on some previous cases (like Covad), but it isn’t satisfying. The TelCo Act, after all, created the system of ILECs and CLECs and duties to deal in order to create competition with the ILECs. If antitrust law (which the TelCo Act by its own terms did not preempt) ignores the regulatory duty to deal, and the TelCo Act regulation doesn’t address the price squeeze, the public policy underlying the TelCo Act is undermined.

The conclusion reached by the DoJ is that price squeezes, absent (antitrust) duty to deal at the wholesale level, can’t state a claim. Such theories boil down to a claim that retail pricing is so low as to harm competition. Antitrust liability for price squeezes is justified only, according to the DoJ, if the Brooke Group standard for predatory pricing is met. This in effect abolishes the price squeeze as a theory of antitrust liability, because no additional elements of the squeeze are necessary if prices are below cost and there is a prospect of recoupment.

But I have my doubts that Brooke Group fits in these situations: on the one hand, the predatory pricing test ignores the existence of a regulatory duty to deal (as I’ve discussed). On the other, the Brooke Group standard, with its recoupment test is particularly tough to meet. This toughness is generally justified because antitrust law should be wary of enforcing higher prices; low prices prima facie enhance consumer welfare. The tough standard is much less justified if, as in the price squeeze cases, the defendant controls the cost of a significant input of its competitors. In LinkLine, AT&T controls the price of DSL wholesale services, which we can assume will make up the largest item in LinkLine’s cost of delivering DSL retail services. A tough standard for predatory pricing is justified where there is a danger of protecting the less-efficient competitor. They are much less justified where it is in the power of the low-price vertically-integrated competitor to raise the cost of its retail competitors.

Updated Slides on Antitrust and IP Law; CC-BY relicensing

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:51:12 GMT

I recently updated my slides on Antitrust and IP law and the ever popular Microsoft cheat sheet. Note that the slides are now available under a Creative Commons attribution only license (aka cc-BY), which is a more permissive license than the prior attribution-only, non-commercial license. We are, in fact, in the process of relicensing this entire blog under cc-BY, mainly because we got lots of questions whether using our stuff in presentations is commercial or non-commercial use. We don’t think it is, but the new license should put an end to any concerns.

Blawg Review #186

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:30:54 GMT

Blawg Review #168 is now available at the Res Ipsa blog.

DOJ Loses Another Criminal Price Fixing Trial

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:47:08 GMT

On November 10, 2008, the DOJ Antitrust Division’s criminal section lost another high profile criminal price fixing trial. This time the individual defendant was acquitted of alleged participation in the highly publicized marine hose cartel that had resulted in numerous guilty pleas. After a two-week trial, the jury returned a verdict in less than two hours. Paul Calli, Michael Pasano and Marissel Descalzo of Carlton Fields, P.A. represented the defendant. (Carlton Fields press release) The criminal section has lost a number of high profile trials recently — DRAM (hung jury; decision not to re-prosecute) and magazine paper.

Beer Merger

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:32:38 GMT

Long time readers know that if there is one thing we at Antitrust Review like more than antitrust, it is beer. Today, the two came together. And yes, we will party like it is 1999 tonight. The AP (via the Washington Post) reports: The Justice Department approved a $52 billion beer buzz Friday, allowing Belgian-based InBev SA to [...]

Long time readers know that if there is one thing we at Antitrust Review like more than antitrust, it is beer. Today, the two came together. And yes, we will party like it is 1999 tonight.

The AP (via the Washington Post) reports:

The Justice Department approved a $52 billion beer buzz Friday, allowing Belgian-based InBev SA to buy out Anheuser-Busch and create the world’s largest brewer.

But InBev’s buzz comes with a slight hiccup: it must sell subsidiary Labatt USA before regulators let the merger go through.

That’s because Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. brews Budweiser and Bud Light compete directly with Labatt Blue and Labatt Blue Light in upstate New York. Without the sell-off condition, the Justice Department said beer prices would increase in metropolitan Buffalo, Rochester, N.Y., and Syracuse, N.Y.

DOJ has also issued a press release.

On The Move: Deborah Garza To Replace Thomas Barnett

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:14:19 GMT

Yesterday, the White House announced that “[t]he President intends to designate Deborah Garza, of Illinois, to be Acting Assistant Attorney General (Antitrust Division) at the Department of Justice.”

Another Large Cartel Fine (and More to Come); This Time LCD Manufacturers

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:26:58 GMT

The New York Times reports: Three leading flat-screen producers — LG Display of South Korea, Sharp of Japan and Chunghwa Picture Tubes of Taiwan — pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a total of $585 million in criminal fines for their role in fixing the price of liquid-crystal display panels. LG is paying the most: a $400 [...]

The New York Times reports:

Three leading flat-screen producers — LG Display of South Korea, Sharp of Japan and Chunghwa Picture Tubes of Taiwan — pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a total of $585 million in criminal fines for their role in fixing the price of liquid-crystal display panels.

LG is paying the most: a $400 million fine, the second-highest criminal fine ever imposed by the Justice Department’s antitrust division. …

The settlement, legal experts say, is unlikely to be the end of the flat-panel case. Under the settlement, the three companies have agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s continuing investigation. Thomas O. Barnett, assistant attorney general in charge of the department’s antitrust division, pointed out at a news conference on Wednesday that the American investigation involved the coordinated efforts of enforcement officials in Europe and Asia, as well as the United States.

Government investigations, legal specialists said, are under way in Europe, Japan and South Korea. In the United States, private class-action suits have already been filed seeking damages for companies that purchased flat-panel screens, and for consumers who bought flat-panel-equipped products. Some of the private suits, if successful, could provide a way for consumers to benefit, though the compensation for any individual would probably be slight.

DOJ has also issued a press release and Thomas Barnett’s statement is also online.

Analysis of DOJ’s Section 2 Report

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:12:25 GMT

We infrequently publicize ABA seminars but we are making an exception today. On December 11, the ABA Section of Antitrust Law is hosting an “Analysis of the Department of Justice’s Section Two Report.” As the ABA’s website states the focus of the one hour, thirty 30 minute seminar is: the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) report on Section [...]

the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) report on Section 2 of the Sherman Act, titled “Competition and Monopoly: Single-Firm Conduct under Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”

Although the DOJ has stated that the Report reflects the substance of hearings on Section 2 that were conducted jointly with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) throughout 2006, the FTC has refused to endorse the report.

What is particularly attractive about this seminar is that two of the three panelists are Kenneth L. Glazer (Deputy Director, Bureau of Competition, Federal Trade Commission) and James J. O’Connell, Jr. (Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, Department of Justice). With luck, there will be fireworks.

A Very Large Cartel Fine

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:23:33 GMT

The EC fined four companies 1.3 billion euros ($1.66 billion) for price fixing. Reuters (via the Washington Post) reports: The EU’s antitrust chief on Wednesday fined car glass producers Asahi, Pilkington, Saint-Gobain and Soliver more than 1.3 billion euros ($1.66 billion) for price-fixing, the largest sum ever levied by the EU for a cartel. France’s Compagnie de Saint-Gobain [...]

The EC fined four companies 1.3 billion euros ($1.66 billion) for price fixing. Reuters (via the Washington Post) reports:

The EU’s antitrust chief on Wednesday fined car glass producers Asahi, Pilkington, Saint-Gobain and Soliver more than 1.3 billion euros ($1.66 billion) for price-fixing, the largest sum ever levied by the EU for a cartel.

France’s Compagnie de Saint-Gobain SA must pay 896 million euros ($1.14 billion) - more than any other company has been fined before.

The European Commission said the four companies control 90 percent of the glass used to make European cars, a market worth 2 billion euros in 2003.

EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said the companies fixed prices over a period of five years. She said the fines were high because European industry had to “learn the lessons the hard way.”

…

The EU said it increased Saint-Gobain’s fine by 60 percent because the company was a cartel repeat offender. It was fined last year for an EU-wide window glass cartel, following earlier fines for a Belgian flat glass cartel in 1988 and a similar cartel on the Italian market in 1984.

The statement of Neelie Kroes can be found here.

Antitrust News & Notes

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:39:45 GMT

David Bois tells the New York Times that he does not expect stricter scrutiny of mergers under an Obama administration because “[p]reserving jobs and economic stability will be perceived as more important than preserving competition.” James “Hart” Holden tells the WSJ Deal Journal the same thing but he [...]

David Bois tells the New York Times that he does not expect stricter scrutiny of mergers under an Obama administration because “[p]reserving jobs and economic stability will be perceived as more important than preserving competition.”
James “Hart” Holden tells the WSJ Deal Journal the same thing but he reasons this is so because many mergers are reviewed by the FTC and ”they’re much less susceptible to political changes than the DOJ is.”
Thomas Barnett, the head of DOJ’s Antitrust Division, is resigning effective November 19, 2008.

The Antitrust Rumormill

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 18:11:45 GMT

Head over to Truth on the Market for the latest.

Are Economic Laws Universal or Culturally Determined?

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:10:04 GMT

Ever since Socrates demolished Gorgias to lasting effect, the universalism vs. relativism debate has had a prominent place in moral theory, in law, and (with some delay) in the natural sciences, too. In stark contrast, much of modern price theory proceeds in a strictly Platonic fashion. The rational actor is an abstraction liberated from the [...]

Ever since Socrates demolished Gorgias to lasting effect, the universalism vs. relativism debate has had a prominent place in moral theory, in law, and (with some delay) in the natural sciences, too. In stark contrast, much of modern price theory proceeds in a strictly Platonic fashion. The rational actor is an abstraction liberated from the contraints of time and place, so is the firm and the idea of the market itself. The perfectly competitive market with its infinite number of atomistic buyers and sellers, each reacting to aggregated forces outside of their control but to which they each unwittingly contribute, trading perfectly homogenous goods in exchange for an ideal currency with constant marginal value, exists in a parallel universe of ideal forms. We observe its various more or less imperfect instantiations in the real world. The closer the real world approximates the ideal, the better. The implication is that basic economic laws are universal, and that there are thus objective normative criteria by which to judge economic systems, irrespective of their time and place. That belief in economics as a process for discovering universal laws of human action, either through mathematical formalization (”nature obeys mathematics”) or through the observation of a quasi-evolutionary process in which those real-world economies survive that better approximate the ideal, is a driving intellectual force behind the neo-conservative faith in the power of free markets, unlocking human potential everywhere.

The real world, however, does not reflect this hopeful (or plainly ideological) Platonism. As Max Weber pointed out, economic institutions and the theories reflecting them, are largely the product of political history, religion, and geography. For example, French and to a somewhat lesser extent German competition law still clearly reflect the administrative tradition, which has a longer history in centralized France than in decentralized Germany, where an expert government bureaucracy ensures that capitalistic enterprise remains alinged with the public good. Given the a priori embeddedness of the market in the broader body politic, the market never comes into view as a fully separate, autonomous system. As a result, there is no real need for a theory of the market as a self-regulating and self-stabilizing process, which is the defining feature of the perfect competition model. The perfect competition model describes, above all, a stable dynamic, a process moving towards equilibrium without any outside intervention. It is the theoretical justification for laissez faire, for why governments can, in fact, afford to leave businesses (and, not coincidentally, the rich) alone. The perfect competition model is expressly designed to explain why ideal free markets simply cannot spiral out of control.

In France and Germany, the market has always been (at least in part) a tool to be deployed by the state in furtherance of public good (however determined). The market is not an end in itself, as it contains no universal truth about human affairs, or at least no truth that, normatively, the body politic should necessarily encourage or embrace. Rather, the ends of the market process are expressly defined in political, not economic terms, and they include competing values beyond productive efficiency, such as predictable growth, limited inflation, and full employment. (Obviously, having those goals is one thing, achieving them is quite a different matter.) Similarly, competition as a key ingredient of the market process is “managed competition,” as opposed to unlimited competition in a hypothetical natural state. The same is true for property in rivalrous goods, another necessary ingredient of the market process. Property in critical sociatal infrastructure such as transportation, energy, and telecommunication, has never been an entirely private affair, irrespective of who created, planned, or financed the infrastructure, which is reflected both in the constitutional definitions of property (e.g., in Germany) and, in practice, in the still significant state ownership of such industries.

In other words, economic institutions and the building blocks of economic theory reflect in significant part the political structure of the society of which the economic system is a part. In the history of philosophy, countless Platonisms have turned out to be little more than theoretical universalizations of unquestioned contingent beliefs. Antitrust economics would greatly benefit from a more explicit historic and comparative perspective. Competition law certainly has.

The Resurgence of the Idea of the Public Good

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:16:17 GMT

One of the undercurrents driving the movement that led to Obama’s landslide victory is that people have finally started to reject en masse a public policy that by and large conceived of them only in the most limited, reductionist, and anemic way possible: as private, rational actors, pursuing primarily their own (usually material) advantage. Yesterday, people asserted their roles as citoyens, as political beings concerned not only with themselves but also with the public good. One of the hallmarks of Obama’s campaign was to ask people to do something, to get involved. Not just to contribute financially, but to reach out, organize house parties, call battleground states, take time off for poll watch, all of which meant doing things together with others, i.e., organizing. The message of change thus implies a belief in the possibility of politically meaningful choice, a notion that has been conspicuously absent for a long time, and which is categorically different from consumer choice. How will this re-assertion of the person over the individual play out in the legal world and the antitrust world in particular? I expect a gradual re-evaluation of how the legal system and economic scholarship relate to each other. The normative principle of law is justice. That of economics is efficiency. Taking rights seriously requires that judges and lawyers adopt an internal point of view and put justice first. Of course, this is not to deny that the legal system should import efficiency considerations here and there. For market regulation and marketplace design rules such as antitrust, efficiency is indeed the right default choice. Fortunately, over a wide range of issues, efficiency and justice are not in conflict with one another. It is, however, meant as a reminder that the legal system is fundamentally independent from economics. Normatively, the legal system belongs to a different domain, and in a democracy the legal system does not take orders from the economic system. The latter may very well constrain or enable actions of the former, but factual obstacles are very much unlike normative constraints.

Google Abandons Deal with Yahoo in Response to Antitrust Concerns

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:27:17 GMT

On July 2, 2008, this blawg reported that the Antitrust Division issued civil investigative demands to investigate the potential competitive effects from an agreement between Google and Yahoo that would allow Google to post advertisements on Yahoo in exchange for part of the revenue. Google announced today that it has withdrawn from the transaction in [...]

Goolge and Yahoo Are Not Going To Be Partners

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:15:50 GMT

The AP (via the New York Times) reports: Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have scrapped their Internet advertising partnership, abandoning attempts to overcome the objections of antitrust regulators and customers who believed the alliance would give Google too much power over online commerce. … The Justice Department signaled it was considering a legal challenge to the deal in [...]

The AP (via the New York Times) reports:

Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have scrapped their Internet advertising partnership, abandoning attempts to overcome the objections of antitrust regulators and customers who believed the alliance would give Google too much power over online commerce.

…

The Justice Department signaled it was considering a legal challenge to the deal in September when it hired veteran antitrust lawyer Sanford Litvack to review the case.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Google and Yahoo had proposed restrictions on the deal — capping the amount of search ads Yahoo could outsource to Google — in a late bid to win favor. Google’s statement Wednesday indicated the idea didn’t fly.

Blawg Review #184

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:24:13 GMT

Check out Blawg Review #184 at The Faculty Lounge.

DOJ Uses Familiar Delay Tactics to Try to Gain an Unfair Advantage in the Beef Packing Merger Litigation

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:00:05 GMT

It appears that in United States v. JBS, S.A., the government is using the same tactics that it did in United States v. UPM-Kymmene Oyj — both of which were brought in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The government is hoping to kill the deal by trying to [...]

It appears that in United States v. JBS, S.A., the government is using the same tactics that it did in United States v. UPM-Kymmene Oyj — both of which were brought in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The government is hoping to kill the deal by trying to delay the case and seeking to avoid a consolidated trial on the merits with a preliminary injunction hearing. If the preliminary injunction hearing is not consolidated, the government can prevail by only showing that there is a serious question going to the merits rather than by a preponderance of evidence. This approach will allow the government to avoid proving its case at trial because as the parties have made clear, a preliminary injunction will kill the deal. They will not wait for a trial at a later date.

UPM was successful in obtaining a prompt preliminary injunction hearing because UPM was not required to consent to an extension of the temporary restraining order. Notwithstanding that Section 15 of the Clayton Act and the legislative history of the HSR Act support a prompt consolidated trial on the merits as the Clayton Act directs that “the trial shal be as soon as may be” and the HSR Act was enacted to “promote the legitimate interests of business community” as well as the nearly uniform line of cases that consolidated such proceedings, the UPM Court did not do so. As the parties had promised, they abandoned the merger after the preliminary injunction was granted. Thus, UPM further supports the proposition that consolidation is the most practical approach because as numerous courts have observed, a preliminary injunction will kill the deal.

It is regrettable that the government chooses to engage in these tactics rather than allow a court to decide the merits.

Good Advice for the Safe Use of Statistics

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:27:10 GMT

From John Ralston Saul:[I]f you can take a number a statistics and you can either halve it or double it and it’s still shocking then you can use it.

From John Ralston Saul:

[I]f you can take a number a statistics and you can either halve it or double it and it’s still shocking then you can use it.

Who Owns ideas? Excellent CBC Radio Feature

antitrustreview@gmail.com (David Fischer) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:47:28 GMT

This great feature by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation examines the (many) apparent and (few, but serious) real tensions between creating a commons of publicly available works and rewarding artists and how copyrights and patents have morphed from a necessary evil (circa 1787) to “tangible property plus.” Happy Halloween!

Recent Articles in Antitrust Law from LexMonitor