Innovation consists of new ideas, methods and products and together they drive economic growth and deliver benefits to society as a whole. Competitive intensity and rewards both drive innovation, but the importance of providing high rewards, which are secured by intellectual property rights...

This essay reviews Michael Carrier's recent book, Innovation in the 21st Century. While the book is well-written and full of accessible content, it nevertheless fails in its ambitious effort to defend the concept of an antitrust-relevant "innovation market." The essay notes that there is...

Severe limitations on antitrust enforcement officials' knowledge and the potential impact of ill-advised investigations and prosecutions on markets suggest that officials should exercise extraordinary caution in enforcement of restraints on single-firm conduct. Although it is common to depict...

This paper looks at whether the standard unilateral effects model can be applied to non-price competition parameters such as innovation. This question arises because competition authorities are intervening in horizontal mergers that are found to give rise to a “significant impediment to...

Standards, common platforms allowing products to work together, are ubiquitous in our economy. But imagine that a company:(1) has a patent needed to use a standard, (2) promises to license the patent on reasonable terms, and then (3) says it was just kidding as it seeks to block the product or...

In my testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, I explained the benefits of legislation addressing anticompetitive conduct that brand-name drug companies have employed: sample denials, pay-for-delay settlements, citizen petitions, product hopping, and patent thickets. By increasing generic...

Innovation can either be viewed by the competition authorities as a parameter that should be protected from the potential negative effects of a transaction, or it can be utilized by the merging parties as part of a defense argument to set off against or abate the anticompetitive concerns raised...

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is a recently-formed division of the Patent Office in which patents can be challenged as invalid, and which differs from federal courts in a number of respects. We investigate whether monopolist-patentees and their prospective rivals are using the PTAB...

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...