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2016 Antitrust Writing Nominations

By  |  January 31, 2016
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We are very happy to announce 9 of our articles have been nominated to the 2016 Antitrust Writing Awards, by Concurrences!The Academic Articles Awards reward the best articles published in peer-reviewed journals in 2015.
These Awards aim at promoting antitrust scholarship. 100 articles have been selected by the Editorial Committee. The Academic Steering Committee and the readers will nominate 20 of these articles. The Board will elect the 10 winning articles. Results will be announced at the Awards Gala Dinner on April 5, 2016.Here is the list of all of our nominees. Don’t forget to vote!

Unfair Drug Prices and Section 5

By Harry First in November 2015

Recent examples of pharmaceutical drug acquisitions followed by exorbitant price raises have drawn cries of indignation, from presidential candidates and from Congress, but the question this essay addresses is whether this type of conduct should bring antitrust action, specifically, action by the Federal Trade Commission under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act. I think the answer should be yes.

The Proper Role of Privacy in Merger Review

By Darren S. Tucker in

There have been increasing calls for the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to consider the potential loss of consumer privacy as a factor in their merger reviews and to challenge mergers of firms with large stores of personal data that otherwise pose no apparent competitive issues. These calls are unlikely to be successful.

Apples and Oranges: Comparing Assertions of SEPs and Differentiating Patents from an Antitrust Perspective

By Jay Jurata and Adya Baker in March

Intellectual property and antitrust laws share a common goal of fostering innovation while protecting competition. In the United States, the Patent Act bestows on the patent holder the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing the patented invention, as well as the right to exploit the patented invention through licensing it to others.

Intellectual Ventures v. Capital One: Can Antitrust Law and Economics Get Us Past the Trolls?

By Michelle D. Miller and Janusz A. Ordover in January

Patent trolls are currently under intense scrutiny by lawmakers, regulators, academics, and industry players. The term “patent troll” generally refers to patent owners that do not make or sell products, and instead focus on licensing and litigation to monetize their acquired patents. These entities are also known as “patent assertion entities” (PAEs), and in this paper, we use the terms interchangeably.

Product Hopping and the Limits of Antitrust: The Danger of Micromanaging Innovation

By Douglas H. Ginsburg, Koren W. Wong-Ervin & Joshua D. Wright in December

In this article on product hopping, we explain that, considering the potential for significant consumer benefits from even small changes in product design, coupled with antitrust agencies and courts being ill-equipped to displace the judgments of consumers (and, with regard to drugs, their doctors) about the value of a new product design, product hopping should be per se lawful absent objective evidence that Product B is a sham innovation with zero or negative consumer welfare effects.

Is the Continued Success of Leniency in Cartel Cases in Danger? Some Comments from a Private Practitioner’s Perspective

By Romina Polley in September

For many years leniency has been the most successful tool in uncovering secret hardcore cartels, both at the level of the European Commission and national competition authorities (“NCAs”) in the European Union. Hardly any cartels have been prosecuted without input from an immunity applicant and, apart from evidence collected during inspections, the authorities obtain all the evidence from leniency applicants including lower-ranking ones, e.g., written evidence resulting from detailed electronic review and personal statements.

Competition Law in Singapore

By Kala Anandarajah and Dominique Lombardi in August

Singapore was one of the first ASEAN countries to adopt (and enforce effectively) a generic competition law. The decision to introduce a generic competition law was based on the recommendations of the Economic Review Committee in 2003 to “create a level playing field for businesses, big and small, to compete on equal footing.”

Public Enforcement of Antitrust Law in China: Perspective of Procedural Fairness

By Jet Deng and Ken Dai in August

Some high-profile antitrust investigations such as the one against Qualcomm by the National Development and Reform Commission (“NDRC”) of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”), initiated in November 2013 and concluded in February 2015, with a sanction order almost reshaping the global wireless patent landscape, has drawn the worldwide attention to the public enforcement of antitrust law in China.

Vertical Restraints and the Forgotten Function of Prices in Brand Management

By Roman Inderst and Frank Maier-Rigaud in May

This article emphasizes that the role of price as a cost to consumers is but one relevant role that prices play in the context of vertical restraints of branded products. In addition to being costs and signals of relative scarcity, prices also convey information, such as on the quality of the product or service.