This paper examines the evolution of national competition (antitrust) policies and enforcement approaches vis-à-vis intellectual property rights (IPRs) and associated anti-competitive practices in major jurisdictions over the past several decades. It focuses especially on the underlying process...

We study the 1956 consent decree against the Bell System to investigate whether patents held by a dominant firm are harmful for innovation and if so, whether compulsory licensing can provide an effective remedy. The consent decree settled an antitrust lawsuit that charged Bell with having...

Competition agency guidelines, policy statements and related advocacy are an important vehicle for policy expression and the guidance of firms across the full spectrum of anti-competitive practices and market conduct. The role of guidelines and policy statements has, arguably, been particularly...

Two suppliers of a homogenous good know that, in the second period, they will be able to collude. Gains from collusion are split according to the Nash bargaining solution. In the first period, either of them is able to invest into process innovation. Innovation changes the status quo pay-off,...

The existence of parallel imports (PI) raises a number of interesting policy and strategic questions, which are the subject of this survey article. For example, parallel trade is essentially arbitrage within policy-integrated markets of IPR-protected goods, which may have different prices across...

Intellectual property rights and competition policy are intimately related. In this paper I survey the economic literature analyzing the interaction between intellectual property law and competition law and how the boundary between these two policies is drawn in practice. Recognizing that...

There have been many books, essays and decisions by courts about the Essential-Facilities-Doctrine, especially since the famous decision of US Supreme Court on United States v. Terminal Railroad Ass's in 1912. In this paper I give an overview about the Essential-Facilities-Doctrine in the US, EC...

The essay develops a new approach for antitrust analysis of pay-for-delay settlements in pharmaceutical patent infringement cases, an approach that shows them to be presumptively prohibited agreements in restraint of competition. The issue is timely in light of the Watson v FTC case now pending...

Licensing technology essential to a standard can present a hold-up problem. After designing new products incorporating a standard, a manufacturer could be confronted by an innovator asserting patent rights to essential technology. A damages remedy provided by antitrust or some other body of law...

In June 2009, the OECD Competition Committee continued a discussion on innovation that began in 2006. This roundtable revisited the ways in which competition and patents can influence innovative activity. It also explored the uncertainty created by pending patents and how that uncertainty can be...