Antitrust & Competition Policy Blog

P&G Gillette Merger

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that the merger will most likely pass antitrust scrutiny by the FTC given the diverse product lines of the two companies.  Here are some useful links about the merger:

Facts about the merger

Wall Street Responses to merger news

Antitrust scrutiny

Effect on markets

Fed Circuit on Patents and Market Power

In a decision handed down yesterday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a grant of summary judgment  for the defendant in a tying case because the district court failed to properly assess market power in light of the defendant's patents.  The Federal Circuit stated: "We hold that a rebuttable presumption of market power arises from the possession of a patent over a tying product."  The case is Independent Ink v. Illinois Tool Works.    More information can be found at Dennis Crouch's patent blog. 

SUN Poised to Release Solaris, Open Source Code

Here are a series of links to the story:

Technology News Story

C|Net News.com

The Register

ServerWatch

DoJ Brings Antitrust Scrutiny to Gannett and New York Times

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that the DoJ is stepping up investigation of Gannett and the New York Times with special scrutiny of Gannett's proposed buyout of HomeTown Communications Network, Inc. and The New York Times' taking a 49 % share in Metro Boston.  Follow this link for a Newsday report online.

Evanston Northwestern Settles Price Fixing Claims in FTC Investigation

As a follow up to an earlier post on th FTC's move to undo a hospital merger between Highland Park Hospital and Evanston Northwestern, the merged hospital settled a price fixing claim by agreeing to stop negotiating fee for service contracts for independent physicians affilated with the hospital.   The FTC's case to undo the merger continues. 

EU Imposes Fine on Monochloracetic Acid Price Fixing Cartel

Fine of 216.91 million Euros imposed on Akzo Nobel, Atofina, and Hoechst by the European Commission. 

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Judge Enjoins DoJ Prosecution of Stolt-Nielsen and Wingfield

On January 14,  the US District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania issued an order enjoining antitrust prosecution by the DoJ of Stolt-Nielsen and its former managing director for alleged antitrust violations in the parcel tanker industry.  A link to a brief article and the order. 

FTC to Review 2000 Hospital merger

In order to address a source of rising health care costs, the FTC announced that it would take a more agressive stance towards mergers in the health care industry.  Next month, the Commission brings to trial a case that seeks to reverse the 2000 merger between Highland Park Hospital in suburban Chicago and Evanston Northwestern  Healthcare Corp.   The case is founded on post-merger anti-competitive activity, which allegedly has increased costs to insureres and employers by about 40-60 per cent.   Today's Wall Stree Journal has a front page story and CNN also reports on the story. 

More on the Diebold case

A nice article by Ivan Schneider in Bank Systems & Technology Online. 

Visa Check/Master Money Litigation

Here's a link to an advisory letter drafted by Constantine & Partners. 

More on antitrust suit against Apple over iPod

Good  online article quotes from the complaint. 

IBM Sale of PC Business to Lenovo Approved

No action will be taken in the US to block the merger which could created the world's third largest PC manufacturer.   Follow this link for more. 

Proposed antitrust exemption for RIAA and MPAA

The Enhancing Federal Obscenity Reporting and Copyright Enforcement Act of 2003 (EnFORCE Act), co-sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch, contains a provision granting antitrust immunity to the RIAA and the MPAA.  See an article discussing the provision here.

Whether your allegiences are to a red state or a blue state, this type of legislation is bad policy in my opinion and should be challenged.

Suit filed by customer against Apple over iPod

For more information, see article in CIO Today.  Sounds like a real long shot.

Update on pending Microsoft settlement in EU

An interesting article on implications of settlement for bundling.

Valuable Website on Journal Pricing

For those interested in the debate over competition in the publication industry and journal pricing, take a look at Professor Ted Bergstrom's web site at The University of California-Santa Barbara.

Two SSRN Working Papers on Competition Policy and the WTO

(1) Bernard Hoekman & Petros C. Mavroidis, Economic Development, Competition Policy, and the WTO:  "To be unambiguously beneficial to low-income countries, any WTO antitrust disciplines should recognize the capacity constraints that prevail in these economies, make illegal collusive business practices by firms with international operations that raise prices in developing country markets, and require competition authorities in high-income countries to take action against firms located in their jurisdictions to defend the interests of affected developing country consumers."

(2) Bernard Hoekman & Kamal Saggi, International Cooperation and Domestic Policies: Lessons from the WTO Competition Debate:     
International cooperation is generally driven by a desire to offset a negative spillover imposed by other countries or to help governments to overcome domestic political economy constraints that impede the adoption of welfare enhancing policy changes. In principle, both conditions are satisfied in the competition policy context for developing countries. This then raises the question why no agreement could be reached in the WTO to launch negotiations on competition law. In this Paper, we review what was on the table in the WTO and discuss the lessons that are suggested by the seven-year effort in the WTO to develop a negotiating/cooperation agenda. We argue that the process was a productive one, as it helped identify potential gains from cooperation, although the institutional framework for this has come to lie outside the WTO. A reason for this is that over time the discussions came to focus less on areas where there clearly are spillovers, and more on 'good practices' for domestic enforcement of antitrust law - an area in which the WTO does not have an obvious comparative advantage.

Hovenkamp article on IP-Antitrust Interface

Professor Herbert Hovenkamp has posted an interesting article on SSRN arguing that the tension between antitrust and IP is exaggerated.  He argues that antitrust law should be more deferential to IP especially since IP legislation has become less public regarding and more special interest oriented.   He cautions against a return to the pre-New Deal skepticism of IP and advocates more careful scrutiny of the real competitive harms from overly broad IP. 

Article on reverse payments

Reverse payments are settlement payments made by a patent holder of a pharmaceutical product to a generic manufacturer in a patent infringement law suit.  These settlements have been scrutinized by courts and the FTC under antitrust law recently with conflicting results.  Some courts apply a per se approach; others, rule of reason. The FTC has adopted the position of per se illegality with the possibility of justification.

Professor John Lopatka has made an interesting scholarly contribution to debate in his article A Comment on the Antitrust Analysis of Reverse Payment Patent Settlements Through the Lens of the Hand Formula, 79 Tulane Law review 235 (2004).  Professor Lopatka recommends that courts apply a benefit-cost analysis of the settlements separate from an inquiry into patent validity.   He describes his approach as follows:

"In this adaptation, the variables of the Hand formula have the following meanings:
B =The marginal social cost of an alternative to a reverse payment settlement.
P =The probability of loss.
L =The deadweight loss in allocative efficiency caused by an unlawful restraint on competition.
Some implications of these definitions bear emphasis. The relevant cost of a precaution is social cost. Purely private cost, in the form of lost monopoly profits from an illegal combination, is excluded because it does not represent a social cost. Moreover, cost should be understood in the conventional economic sense of opportunity cost: the full cost of socially valuable opportunities forgone, including productive efficiencies, by use of the alternative under consideration instead of a reverse payment settlement. A reduction in efficiency is both a social cost and a private cost; the avoidance of that cost by use of the reverse payment settlement represents a cognizable private benefit, in contrast to monopoly profits, which are an incognizable private benefit. The relevant loss in allocative efficiency consists solely of that loss attributable to an unlawful restraint of trade, as defined under the antitrust laws. A deadweight loss, which for most purposes can be understood as a consumer welfare loss, brought about by the exploitation of intellectual property rights established in the patent law is not included in L. Antitrust law does not condemn practices that produce only this kind of loss."

Professor Loptaka's approach is effectively a modified rule of reason approach with focus on the benefits and costs of settlement on the market for the drug.  His approach is applied to the 2003 amendments to the Hatch-Waxman Act which placed limits on these settlements and the exclusivity to a generic manufacturer that receives FDA approval:

"The amendments, therefore, greatly reduce the potential for joint exclusion, but they neither eliminate that potential entirely nor eliminate the possibility of collusion. The first generic has seventy-five days after the patent dispute is definitively resolved against the pioneer to protect its right to generic exclusivity, and then that exclusivity will last for 180 days. Therefore at a minimum, other generics can be excluded for seventy-five days. Further, the subsequent 180-day period of exclusivity may not be characterized by vigorous competition between the pioneer and the first generic. For example, the first generic might be able to begin marketing its drug, then stop, thereby preserving the ability to prohibit additional entry despite not in fact competing. Or it might be able to satisfy its commercial marketing obligations under the act through token production. The pioneer and first generic, therefore, may be able to prevent other generics from entering the market for at least 255 days, while not seriously competing against one another. As a technical matter, any anticompetitive impediment to entry should be reflected in L. More generally, strategic agreements between potential competitors that impair competition by other firms translate into a social loss that deserves to be taken into account in L."