Patent rights are not the only important legal entitlements conferred by the Patent Act. It also vests “challenge rights” in third parties, permitting them to challenge granted patents as invalid or uninfringed, and potentially clearing a path for privileged competition. These classes of...

If a litigated patent has previously been licensed to a third party, the courts generally adopt the terms of the prior agreement as the best measure of damages. However, while administratively convenient, this “licensing-based damages” standard creates problematic incentives and undermines...

In his seminal “prospect theory” of patents, Edmund Kitch contends that patents should be relatively broad in order to promote post-grant follow-on innovation and development. The argument rests critically on the assumption that post-grant competition will diminish such efforts. This is just...

In an enforcement action brought by the Federal Trade Commission, a district court recently found that Qualcomm violated the antitrust laws by engaging in anticompetitive exclusive dealing and refusing to license its standard-essential patents (SEPs) to rivals. In this article, we unpack and...

There is widespread support for antitrust reform, fueled mainly by concerns about major platforms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Many believe that these companies have become too large and that they use their power in harmful ways. In the United States, some of the most aggressive reforms...

We study strategic behavior by private litigants when courts' judgments are "inalienable" in the sense that it is unlawful to contract around them ex post. Inalienable judgments arise in many contexts, including antitrust, labor law, intellectual property, unfair competition, and various types...

We consider strategic behavior in non-Coasean litigation: private disputes such that the court's judgment may influence the final allocation of rights even if transaction costs are zero. This occurs when the law prohibits otherwise-profitable efforts to contract around the court's judgment. This...

In today’s digital economy, online competitive advertising plays a central role in informing consumers about low prices and other desirable product features. Accordingly, rivals have a strong incentive and opportunity to place anticompetitive limits on the flow of information. They do so by...

The most pressing debates in antitrust today center on major platforms like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Platform markets are subject to strong network effects, which tend to create barriers to entry and reinforce market power. Frequently, the only way for a new platform to enter the market...