By Gregory J. Werden
The digital economy presents challenges for antitrust law, but changes in substantive antitrust law are not needed to cope with them. The biggest problem in antitrust today is that the courts impose excessive burdens on plaintiffs, but no constructive solution to that problem is evident, and most proposed reform proposals are apt to do more harm than good. Moreover, the meaning of any legislative change to substantive antitrust law could take generations to resolve. The Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act of 1982 is an abject lesson. Its meaning still is not fully resolved, and it threatens the ability of U.S. consumers to seek redress when harmed by international cartels.
