Many vociferous opponents to patent trolls claim that trolls are a drag on society. Patent trolls are accused of using the patent system to extort unreasonable royalty payments from companies who benefit the economy by developing products that consumers want. The extortionary royalty payments,...

Patent litigation has become an increasingly important consideration in business strategy. Damage awards in patent litigation are supposed to compensate the patent owner for economic harm created by infringement and are therefore important for protecting returns to innovation. We analyze the...

The US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission receive notification regarding thousands of mergers per year, and must identify, from the entire set of mergers, those that require further investigation. Merger screens are critical to efficient and effective merger enforcement policy,...

A review of the writings of Joseph Farrell and Carl Shapiro suggest directions they may take antitrust enforcement as chief economists at the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, respectively

On October 1, 2009, the State of Maryland enacted a statute that prohibits the use of minimum resale price maintenance (RPM). This was in response to the Supreme Court’s 2007 Leegin decision that held that RPM should be evaluated under the rule of reason rather than be considered per se...

As typically calculated in U.S. “overcharge” cases under existing law, a plaintiff’s damages can diverge substantially from its economic losses. There are two primary reasons for this. First, only direct purchasers may seek damages under Illinois Brick and related federal case law and only...