Truth on the Market

Academic commentary on law, business, economics and more

Archive for the ‘antitrust’ Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

Abandoning Antitrust’s Chicago Obsession: The Case for Evidence-Based Antitrust

Posted by Josh Wright on May 3, 2012

I’ve posted to SSRN an article written for the Antitrust Law Journal symposium on the Neo-Chicago School of Antitrust.  The article is entitled “Abandoning Chicago’s Antitrust Obsession: The Case for Evidence-Based Antitrust,” and focuses upon what I believe to be a central obstacle to the continued evolution of sensible antitrust rules in the courts and agencies: the dramatic proliferation of economic theories which could be used to explain antitrust-relevant business conduct. That proliferation has given rise to a need for a commitment to develop sensible criteria for selecting among these theories; a commitment not present in modern antitrust institutions.  I refer to this as the “model selection problem,” describe how reliance upon shorthand labels and descriptions of the various “Chicago Schools” have distracted from the development of solutions to this problem, and raise a number of promising approaches to embedding a more serious commitment to empirical testing within modern antitrust.

Here is the abstract.

The antitrust community retains something of an inconsistent attitude towards evidence-based antitrust.  Commentators, judges, and scholars remain supportive of evidence-based antitrust, even vocally so; nevertheless, antitrust scholarship and policy discourse continues to press forward advocating the use of one theory over another as applied in a specific case, or one school over another with respect to the class of models that should inform the structure of antitrust’s rules and presumptions, without tethering those questions to an empirical benchmark.  This is a fundamental challenge facing modern antitrust institutions, one that I call the “model selection problem.”  The three goals of this article are to describe the model selection problem, to demonstrate that the intense focus upon so-called schools within the antitrust community has exacerbated the problem, and to offer a modest proposal to help solve the model selection problem.  This proposal has two major components: abandonment of terms like “Chicago School,” “Neo-Chicago School,” and “Post-Chicago School,” and replacement of those terms with a commitment to testing economic theories with economic knowledge and empirical data to support those theories with the best predictive power.  I call this approach “evidence-based antitrust.”  I conclude by discussing several promising approaches to embedding an appreciation for empirical testing more deeply within antitrust institutions.

I would refer interested readers to the work of my colleagues Tim Muris and Bruce Kobayashi (also prepared for the Antitrust L.J. symposium) Chicago, Post-Chicago, and Beyond: Time to Let Go of the 20th Century, which also focuses upon similar themes.

Posted in antitrust, barriers to entry, behavioral economics, economics, legal scholarship, scholarship | 1 Comment »

Do Expert Agencies Outperform Generalist Judges?

Posted by Josh Wright on May 2, 2012

My work (with GMU 3L Angela Diveley) featured on the University of Pennsylvania’s RegBlog.  An excerpt:

The comparison we conducted is one between institutions – the FTC and the federal judicial system – and not individual judges and commissioners. There is no doubt the antitrust and economic experts at the FTC are well equipped to analyze all modes of business dealings; in this sense, agencies certainly have greater economic expertise than courts as a general rule. However, like the FTC, courts incorporate economic expertise into their decision-making. While the FTC seeks to incorporate its staff’s expertise, courts seek to incorporate the expertise of expert witnesses. Both institutions are organizations with complex internal structures with different modes of transmitting economic expertise into decision-making outputs and different constraints and incentives.
We sought to determine whether the FTC’s institutional structure facilitates the transmission of economic inputs into its adjudicatory decisions more effectively than Article III judges in similar cases. The implicit assumption underlying the expertise hypothesis, and many of the calls for increased delegation to the agencies, is that they are better equipped to convert that expertise to litigation outcomes. If agencies do not hold such an advantage in converting expertise to outputs, interesting and important questions are raised concerning the optimal institutional design of the FTC and of administrative agencies generally. Our preliminary evidence suggests precisely this outcome as we find no advantage for administrative agencies.
Go read the whole thing.  The current draft of the paper is available here.

Posted in antitrust, economics, federal trade commission | Leave a Comment »

Antitrust Citations in Federal Court, 2003-2011

Posted by Josh Wright on April 27, 2012

Below is a graph illustrating the number of citations to selected antitrust publications in federal courts from 2003 – 2011.  The full study is available on the Antitrust Source website and updates previous data collected by Jonathan Baker on behalf of the Antitrust Law Journal Editorial Board. 

The data and study – including a list of articles and opinions in which they are cited – are available at the Antitrust Source (under Supplementary Materials) and Antitrust Law Journal.

Disclosure: I am a member of the Antitrust Law Journal Editorial Board and the Editorial Advisory Board for Competition Policy International’s Antitrust Chronicle.  Special thanks to my research assistant Stephanie Greco for her work on this.

Posted in antitrust, legal scholarship, scholarship | Comments Off

More Misguided Derision from Critics of the Verizon-SpectrumCo Wireless Deal

Posted by Geoffrey Manne on April 25, 2012

The pending wireless spectrum deal between Verizon Wireless and a group of cable companies (the SpectrumCo deal, for short) continues to attract opprobrium from self-proclaimed consumer advocates and policy scolds.  In the latest salvo, Public Knowledge’s Harold Feld (and other critics of the deal) aren’t happy that Verizon seems to be working to appease the regulators by selling off some of its spectrum in an effort to secure approval for its deal.  Critics are surely correct that appeasement is what’s going on here—but why this merits their derision is unclear.

For starters, whatever the objections to the “divestiture,” the net effect is that Verizon will hold less spectrum than it would under the original terms of the deal and its competitors will hold more.  That this is precisely what Public Knowledge and other critics claim to want couldn’t be more clear—and thus neither is the hypocrisy of their criticism.

Note that “divestiture” is Feld’s term, and I think it’s apt, although he uses it derisively.  His derision seems to stem from his belief that it is a travesty that such a move could dare be undertaken by a party acting on its own instead of under direct diktat from the FCC (with Public Knowledge advising, of course).  Such a view—that condemns the private transfer of spectrum into the very hands Public Knowledge would most like to see holding it for the sake of securing approval for a deal that simultaneously improves Verizon’s spectrum position because it is better for the public to suffer (by Public Knowledge’s own standard) than for Verizon to benefit—seems to betray the organization’s decidedly non-public-interested motives.

But Feld amasses some more specific criticisms.  Each falls flat.

For starters, Feld claims that the spectrum licenses Verizon proposes to sell off (Lower (A and B block) 700 MHz band licenses) would just end up in AT&T’s hands—and that doesn’t further the scolds’ preferred vision of Utopia in which smaller providers end up with the spectrum (apparently “small” now includes T-Mobile and Sprint, presumably because they are fair-weather allies in this fight).  And why will the spectrum inevitably end up in AT&T’s hands?  Writes Feld:

AT&T just has too many advantages to reasonably expect someone else to get the licenses. For starters, AT&T has deeper pockets and can get more financing on better terms. But even more importantly, AT&T has a network plan based on the Lower 700 MHz A &B Block licenses it acquired in auction 2008 (and from Qualcomm more recently). It has towers, contracts for handsets, and everything else that would let it plug in Verizon’s licenses. Other providers would need to incur these expenses over and above the cost of winning the auction in the first place.

Allow me to summarize:  AT&T will win the licenses because it can make the most efficient, effective and timely use of the spectrum.  The horror!

Feld has in one paragraph seemingly undermined his whole case.  If approval of the deal turns on its effect on the public interest, stifling the deal in an explicit (and Quixotic) effort to ensure that the spectrum ends up in the hands of providers less capable of deploying it would seem manifestly to harm, not help, consumers.

And don’t forget that, whatever his preferred vision of the world, the most immediate effect of stopping the SpectrumCo deal will be that all of the spectrum that would have been transferred to—and deployed by—Verizon in the deal will instead remain in the hands of the cable companies where it now sits idly, helping no one relieve the spectrum crunch.

But let’s unpack the claims further.  First, a few factual matters.  AT&T holds no 700 MHz block A spectrum.  It bought block B spectrum in the 2008 auction and acquired spectrum in blocks D and E from Qualcomm.

Second, the claim that this spectrum is essentially worthless, especially  to any carrier except AT&T, is betrayed by reality.  First, despite the claimed interference problems from TV broadcasters for A block spectrum, carriers are in fact deploying on the A block and have obtained devices to facilitate doing so effectively.

Meanwhile, Verizon had already announced in November of last year that it planned to transfer 12 MHz of A block spectrum in Chicago to Leap (note for those keeping score at home: Leap is notAT&T) in exchange for other spectrum around the country, and Cox recently announced that it is selling its own A and B block 700 MHz licenses (yes, eight B block licenses would go to AT&T, but four A block licenses would go to US Cellular).

Pretty clearly these A and B block 700 MHz licenses have value, and not just to AT&T.

Feld does actually realize that his preferred course of action is harmful.  According to Feld, even though the transfer would increase spectrum holdings by companies that aren’t AT&T or Verizon, the fact that it might also facilitate the SpectrumCo deal and thus increase Verizon’s spectrum holdings is reason enough to object.  For Feld and other critics of the deal the concern is over concentrationin spectrum holdings, and thus Verizon’s proposed divestiture is insufficient because the net effect of the deal, even with the divestiture, would be to increase Verizon’s spectrum holdings.  Feld writes:

Verizon takes a giant leap forward in its spectrum holding and overall spectrum efficiency, whereas the competitors improve only marginally in absolute terms. Yes, compared to their current level of spectrum constraint, it would improve the ability of competitors [to compete] . . . [b]ut in absolute terms . . . the difference is so marginal it is not helpful.

Verizon has already said that they have no plans (assuming they get the AWS spectrum) to actually use the Lower MHz 700 A & B licenses, so selling those off does not reduce Verizon’s lead in the spectrum gap. So if we care about the spectrum gap, we need to take into account that this divestiture still does not alleviate the overall problem of spectrum concentration, even if it does improve spectrum efficiency.

But Feld is using a fantasy denominator to establish his concentration ratio.  The divestiture only increases concentration when compared to a hypothetical world in which self-proclaimed protectors of the public interest get to distribute spectrum according to their idealized notions of a preferred market structure.  But the relevant baseline for assessing the divestiture, even on Feld’s own concentration-centric terms, is the distribution of licenses under the deal without the divestiture—against which the divestiture manifestly reduces concentration, even if only “marginally.”

Moreover, critics commit the same inappropriate fantasizing when criticizing the SpectrumCo deal itself.  Again, even if Feld’s imaginary world would be preferable to the post-deal world (more on which below), that imaginary world simply isn’t on the table.  What is on the table if the deal falls through is the status quo—that is, the world in which Verizon is stuck with spectrum it is willing to sell and foreclosed from access to spectrum it wants to buy; US Cellular, AT&T and other carriers are left without access to Verizon’s lower-block 700 MHz spectrum; and the cable companies are saddled with spectrum they won’t use.

Perhaps, compared to this world, the deal does increase concentration.  More importantly, compared to this world the deal increases spectrum deployment.  Significantly.  But never mind:  The benefits of actual and immediate deployment of spectrum can never match up in the scolds’ minds to the speculative and theoretical harms from increased concentration, especially when judged against a hypothetical world that does not and will not ever exist.

But what is most appalling about critics’ efforts to withhold valuable spectrum from consumers for the sake of avoiding increased concentration is the reality that increased concentration doesn’t actually cause any harm.

In fact, it is simply inappropriate to assess the likely competitive effects of this or any other transaction in this industry by assessing concentration based on spectrum holdings.  Of key importance here is the reality that spectrum alone—though essential to effective competitiveness—is not enough to amass customers, let alone confer market power.  In this regard it is well worth noting that the very spectrum holdings at issue in the SpectrumCo deal, although significant in size, produce precisely zero market share for their current owners.

Even the FCC recognizes the weakness of reliance upon market structure as an indicator of market competitiveness in its most recent Wireless Competition Report, where the agency notes that highly concentrated markets may nevertheless be intensely competitive.

And the DOJ, in assessing “Economic Issues in Broadband Competition,” has likewise concluded both that these markets are likely to be concentrated and that such concentration does not raisecompetitive concerns.  In large-scale networks “with differentiated products subject to large economies of scale (relative to the size of the market), the Department does not expect to see a large number of suppliers.”  Rather, the DOJ cautions against “striving for broadband markets that look like textbook markets of perfect competition, with many price-taking firms.  That market structure is unsuitable for the provision of broadband services.”

Although commonly trotted out as a conclusion in support of monopolization, the fact that a market may be concentrated is simply not a reliable indicator of anticompetitive effect, and naked reliance on such conclusions is inconsistent with modern understandings of markets and competition.

As it happens, there is detailed evidence in the Fifteenth Wireless Competition Report on actual competitive dynamics; market share analysis is unlikely to provide any additional insight.  And the available evidence suggests that the tide toward concentration has resulted in considerable benefits and certainly doesn’t warrant a presumption of harm in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary specific to this license transfer.  Instead, there is considerable evidence of rapidly falling prices, quality expansion, capital investment, and a host of other characteristics inconsistent with a monopoly assumption that might otherwise be erroneously inferred from a structural analysis like that employed by Feld and other critics.

In fact, as economists Gerald Faulhaber, Robert Hahn & Hal Singer point out, a simple plotting of cellular prices against market concentration shows a strong inverse relationship inconsistent with an inference of monopoly power from market shares:

Today’s wireless market is an arguably concentrated but remarkably competitive market.  Concentration of resources in the hands of the largest wireless providers has not slowed the growth of the market; rather the central problem is one of spectrum scarcity.  According to the Fifteenth Report, “mobile broadband growth is likely to outpace the ability of technology and network improvements to keep up by an estimated factor of three, leading to a spectrum deficit that is likely to approach 300 megahertz within the next five years.”

Feld and his friends can fret about the phantom problem of concentration all they like—it doesn’t change the reality that the real problem is the lack of available spectrum to meet consumer demand.  It’s bad enough that they are doing whatever they can to stop the SpectrumCo deal itself which would ensure that spectrum moves from the cable companies, where it sits unused, to Verizon, where it would be speedily deployed.  But when they contort themselves to criticize even the re-allocation of spectrum under the so-called divestiture, which would directly address the very issue they hold so dear, it is clear that these “protectors of consumer rights” are not really protecting consumers at all.

[Cross-posted at Forbes]

Posted in antitrust, business, doj, federal communications commission, law and economics, markets, monopolization, politics, technology, telecommunications | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Summary Judgment Granted in Mayer Laboratories v. Church & Dwight

Posted by Josh Wright on April 25, 2012

Judge Edward Chen in the Northern District of California granted Church & Dwight’s motion for summary judgment as to Mayer Laboratories antitrust claims involving Church & Dwight’s shelf space agreements with retailers in the condom market.  Church & Dwight is the manufacturer of Trojan brand condoms.  Specifically, Mayer argued that Church & Dwight’s shelf space share discounts with retailers — all units discounts triggered upon the retailer committing a specified percentage of its condom shelf space to Trojan products — prevented Mayer from competing by denying it access to retailer shelf space and thus allowed Church & Dwight to unlawfully monopolize the condom market.

Judge Chen’s opinion is available here (and at 2012 WL 1231801).  Judge Chen’s opinion is lengthy and correspondingly thorough; summary judgment was granted on a number of independent grounds, including lack of antitrust injury, failure to demonstrate substantial foreclosure, and insufficient evidence of monopoly power.  I was the economic expert witness for Church & Dwight in the case (along with my colleague at Charles River Associates, Serge Moresi, who filed a rebuttal report) and am obviously quite pleased with the outcome and that Judge Chen relied upon my analysis in reaching these conclusions.

Notwithstanding my private interest in the case, I suspect our readers will find the opinion interesting both respect to the handling of economic evidence, but also with respect to the analysis of shelf space share discounts, which have been the focus of some recent speeches by agency economists.  Judge Chen’s opinion also directly addresses both traditional foreclosure based analysis of allegedly exclusionary agreements as well as the more novel “tax effect” theories.  While I cannot comment on the case directly, I thought some of our readers might be interested in seeing the opinion.

Professor Wright, a recognized authority on vertical contractual arrangements at the George Mason University School of Law, filed expert and rebuttal reports in anticipation of trial. Serge Moresi, CRA’s Director of Competition Modeling, filed a rebuttal report in response to the claims of Mayer Laboratories’ economic experts. Professor Wright and Dr. Moresi explained why, both factually and conceptually, the opposing experts’ claims were substantially flawed. Relying extensively on the evidence and analysis presented by CRA’s economic experts, the Court granted summary judgment in Church & Dwight’s favor with regard to each of the antitrust claims raised in this case.

Posted in antitrust, economics, exclusionary conduct, exclusive dealing, monopolization | 1 Comment »

The procompetitive story that could undermine the DOJ’s e-books antitrust case against Apple

Posted by Geoffrey Manne on April 12, 2012

Did Apple conspire with e-book publishers to raise e-book prices?  That’s what DOJ argues in a lawsuit filed yesterday. But does that violate the antitrust laws?  Not necessarily—and even if it does, perhaps it shouldn’t.

Antitrust’s sole goal is maximizing consumer welfare.  While that generally means antitrust regulators should focus on lower prices, the situation is more complicated when we’re talking about markets for new products, where technologies for distribution and consumption are evolving rapidly along with business models.  In short, the so-called Agency pricing model Apple and publishers adopted may mean (and may not mean) higher e-book prices in the short run, but it also means more variability in pricing, and it might well have facilitated Apple’s entry into the market, increasing e-book retail competition and promoting innovation among e-book readers, while increasing funding for e-book content creators.

The procompetitive story goes something like the following.  (As always with antitrust, the question isn’t so much which model is better, but that no one really knows what the right model is—least of all antitrust regulators—and that, the more unclear the consumer welfare effects of a practice are, as in rapidly evolving markets, the more we should err on the side of restraint).

Apple versus Amazon

Apple–decidedly a hardware company–entered the e-book market as a device maker eager to attract consumers to its expensive iPad tablets by offering appealing media content.  In this it is the very opposite of Amazon, a general retailer that naturally moved into retailing digital content, and began selling hardware (Kindle readers) only as a way of getting consumers to embrace e-books.

The Kindle is essentially a one-trick pony (the latest Kindle notwithstanding), and its focus is on e-books.  By contrast, Apple’s platform (the iPad and, to a lesser degree, the iPhone) is a multi-use platform, offering Internet browsing, word processing, music, apps, and other products, of which books probably accounted–and still account–for a relatively small percentage of revenue.  Importantly, unlike Amazon, Apple has many options for promoting adoption of its platform—not least, the “sex appeal” of its famously glam products.  Without denigrating Amazon’s offerings, Amazon, by contrast, competes largely on the basis of its content, and its devices sell only as long as the content is attractive and attractively priced.

In essence, Apple’s iPad is a platform; Amazon’s Kindle is a book merchant wrapped up in a cool device.

What this means is that Apple, unlike Amazon, is far less interested in controlling content prices for books and other content; it hardly needs to control that lever to effectively market its platform, and it can easily rely on content providers’ self interest to ensure that enough content flows through its devices.

In other words, Apple is content to act as a typical platform would, acting as a conduit for others’ content, which the content owner controls.  Amazon surely has “platform” status in its sights, but reliant as it is on e-books, and nascent as that market is, it is not quite ready to act like a “pure” platform.  (For more on this, see my blog post from 2010).

The Agency Model

As it happens, publishers seem to prefer the Agency Model, as well, preferring to keep control over their content in this medium rather than selling it (as in the brick-and-mortar model) to a retailer like Amazon to price, market, promote and re-sell at will.  For the publishers, the Agency Model is essentially a form of resale price maintenance — ensuring that retailers who sell their products do not inefficiently discount prices.  (For a clear exposition of the procompetitive merits of RPM, see this article by Benjamin Klein).

(As a side note, I suspect that they may well be wrong to feel this way.  The inclination seems to stem from a fear of e-books’ threat to their traditional business model — a fear of technological evolution that can have catastrophic consequences (cf. Kodak, about which I wrote a few weeks ago).  But then content providers moving into digital media have been consistently woeful at understanding digital markets).

So the publishers strike a deal with Apple that gives the publishers control over pricing and Apple a cut (30%) of the profits.  Contrary to the DOJ’s claim in its complaint, this model happens to look exactly like Apple’s arrangement for apps and music, as well, right down to the same percentage Apple takes from sales.  This makes things easier for Apple, gives publishers more control over pricing, and offers Apple content and a good return sufficient to induce it to market and sell its platform.

It is worth noting here that there is no reason to think that the wholesale model wouldn’t also have generated enough content and enough return for Apple, so I don’t think the ultimate motivation here for Apple was higher prices (which could well have actually led to lower total return given fewer sales), but rather that it wasn’t interested in paying for control.  So in exchange for a (possibly) larger slice of the pie, as well as consistency with its existing content provider back-end and the avoidance of having to monitor and make pricing decisions,  Apple happily relinquished decision-making over pricing and other aspects of sales.

The Most Favored Nation Clauses

Having given up this price control, Apple has one remaining problem: no guarantee of being able to offer attractive content at an attractive price if it is forced to try to sell e-books at a high price while its competitors can undercut it.  And so, as is common in this sort of distribution agreement, Apple obtains “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) clauses from publishers to ensure that if they are permitting other platforms to sell their books at a lower price, Apple will at least be able to do so, as well.  The contracts at issue in the case specify maximum resale prices for content and ensure Apple that if a publisher permits, say, Amazon to sell the same content at a lower price, it will likewise offer the content via Apple’s iBooks store for the same price.

The DOJ is fighting a war against MFNs, which is a story for another day, and it seems clear from the terms of the settlement with the three setting publishers that indeed MFNs are a big part of the target here.  But there is nothing inherently problematic about MFNs, and there is plenty of scholarship explaining why they are beneficial.  Here, and important among these, they facilitate entry by offering some protection for an entrant’s up-front investment in challenging an incumbent, and prevent subsequent entrants from undercutting this price.  In this sense MFNs are essentially an important way of inducing retailers like Apple to sign on to an RPM (no control) model by offering some protection against publishers striking a deal with a competitor that leaves Apple forced to price its e-books out of the market.

There is nothing, that I know of, in the MFNs or elsewhere in the agreements that requires the publishers to impose higher resale prices elsewhere, or prevents the publishers from selling throughApple at a lower price, if necessary.  That said, it may well have been everyone’s hope that, as the DOJ alleges, the MFNs would operate like price floors instead of price ceilings, ensuring higher prices for publishers.  But hoping for higher prices is not an antitrust offense, and, as I’ve discussed, it’s not even clear that, viewed more broadly in terms of the evolution of the e-book and e-reader markets, higher prices in the short run would be bad for consumers.

The Legal Standard

To the extent that book publishers don’t necessarily know what’s really in their best interest, the DOJ is even more constrained in judging the benefits (or costs) for consumers at large from this scheme.  As I’ve suggested, there is a pretty clear procompetitive story here, and a court may indeed agree that this should not be judged under a per se liability standard (as would apply in the case of naked price-fixing).

Most important, here there is no allegation that the publishers and Apple (or the publishers among themselves) agreed on price.  Rather, the allegation is that they agreed to adopt a particular business model (one that, I would point out, probably resulted in greater variation in price, rather than less, compared to Amazon’s traditional $9.99-for-all pricing scheme).  If the DOJ can convince a court that this nevertheless amounts to a naked price-fixing agreement among publishers, with Apple operating as the hub, then they are probably sunk.  But while antitrust law is suspicious of collective action among rivals in coordinating on prices, this change in business model does not alone coordinate on prices.  Each individual publisher can set its own price, and it’s not clear that the DOJ’s evidence points to any agreement with respect to actual pricing level.

It does seem pretty clear that there is coordination here on the shift in business models.  But sometimes antitrust law condones such collective action to take account of various efficiencies (think standard setting or joint ventures or collective rights groups like BMI).  Here, there is a more than plausible case that coordinated action to move to a plausibly-more-efficient business model was necessary and pro-competitive.  If Apple can convince a court of that, then the DOJ has a rule of reason case on its hands and is facing a very uphill battle.

Posted in antitrust, business, contracts, error costs, law and economics, MFNs, resale price maintenance, technology | Tagged: , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Steve Salop Wins Global Competition Review Academic Excellence Award

Posted by Josh Wright on April 9, 2012

Congratulations to my friend, colleague, and occasional TOTM contributor Steve Salop (Georgetown Law) on winning Global Competition Review’s Academic Excellence Award this year.  From the announcement:

Around 1,500 Global Competition Review (GCR) readers cast their votes, honoring outstanding individuals in such areas as competition law and economics around the world. GCR is the world’s leading antitrust and competition law journal and news service. The Academic Excellence Award recognizes a highly regarded academic and was presented to Professor Salop at GCR’s 2nd Annual Charity Awards Dinner in Washington, DC. In addition to being a senior consultant to CRA, Dr. Salop is a professor of economics and law at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC, where he teaches antitrust law and economics and economic reasoning for lawyers.

Congratulations Steve.

Posted in announcements, antitrust, economics, scholarship | Comments Off

I Will be Participating Today on the Live Webcast “This Week in Law”

Posted by Geoffrey Manne on April 6, 2012

Today at 11AM PT I will be participating on the live webcast “This Week in Law” along with TechFreedom Senior Adjunct Fellow Larry Downes. Denise Howell will be hosting and we will also be joined by fellow participant Evan Brown. This week we will be discussing various topics in tech policy including Senator Al Franken’s lambast of Facebook and Google, the newly opened antitrust investigation of Motorola Mobility by the European Commission, and the continued problem of spectrum crunch.

This Week in Law is recorded live every Friday at 11:00am PT/2:00pm ET and covers topics primarily in law, technology, and public policy. You do not have to register, just follow this link at 11:00am PT/2:00pm ET to watch.

Posted in antitrust, general, net neutrality, politics, privacy | 1 Comment »

Europe Should Let Competition Run Its Course In Motorola Patent Dispute

Posted by Geoffrey Manne on April 5, 2012

On Tuesday the European Commission opened formal proceedings against Motorola Mobility based on its patent licensing practices surrounding some of its core cellular telephony, Internet video and Wi-fi technology. The Commission’s concerns, echoing those raised by Microsoft and Apple, center on Motorola’s allegedly high royalty rates and its efforts to use injunctions to enforce the “standards-essential patents” at issue.

As it happens, this development is just the latest, like so many in the tech world these days, in Microsoft’s ongoing regulatory, policy and legal war against Google, which announced in August it was planning to buy Motorola.

Microsoft’s claim and the Commission’s concern that Motorola’s royalty offer was, in Microsoft’s colorful phrase, “so over-reaching that no rational company could ever have accepted it or even viewed it as a legitimate offer,” is misplaced. Motorola is seeking a royalty rate for its patents that is seemingly in line with customary rates.

In fact, Microsoft’s claim that Motorola’s royalty ask is extraordinary is refuted by its own conduct. As one commentator notes:

Microsoft complained that it might have to pay a tribute of up to $22.50 for every $1,000 laptop sold, and suggested that it might be fairer to pay just a few cents. This is the firm that is thought to make $10 to $15 from every $500 Android device that is sold, and for a raft of trivial software patents, not standard essential ones.

Seemingly forgetting this, Microsoft criticizes Motorola’s royalty ask on its 50 H.264 video codec patents by comparing it to the amount Microsoft pays for more than 2000 other patents in the video codec’s patent pool, claiming that the former would cost it $4 billion while the latter costs it only $6.5 million. But this is comparing apples and oranges. It is not surprising to find some patents worth orders of magnitude more than others and to find that license rates are a complicated function of the contracting parties’ particular negotiating positions and circumstances. It is no more inherently inappropriate for Microsoft to rake in 2-3% of the price of every Nook Barnes and Nobles sells than it is for Motorola to net 2.25% of the price of each Windows-operated computer sold – which is the royalty rate Motorola is seeking and which Microsoft wants declared anticompetitive out of hand.

It’s not clear how much negotiation, if any, has taken place between the companies over the terms of Microsoft’s licensing of Motorola’s patents, but what is clear is that Microsoft’s complaint, echoed by the EC, is based on the size of Motorola’s initial royalty demand and its use of a legal injunction to enforce its patent rights. Unfortunately, neither of these is particularly problematic, especially in an environment where companies like Microsoft and Apple aggressively wield exactly such tools to gain a competitive negotiating edge over their own competitors.

The court adjudicating this dispute in the ongoing litigation in U.S. district court in Washington has thus far agreed. The court denied Microsoft’s request for summary judgment that Motorola’s royalty demand violated its RAND commitment, noting its disagreement with Microsoft’s claim that “it is always facially unreasonable for a proposed royalty rate to result in a larger royalty payment for products that have higher end prices. Indeed, Motorola has previously entered into licensing agreements for its declared-essential patents at royalty rates similar to those offered to Microsoft and with royalty rates based on the price of the end product.”

The staggering aggregate numbers touted by Microsoft in its complaint and repeated by bloggers and journalists the world over are not a function of Motorola seeking an exorbitant royalty but rather a function Microsoft’s selling a lot of operating systems and earning a lot of revenue doing it. While the aggregate number ($4 billion, according to Microsoft) is huge, it is, as the court notes, based on a royalty rate that is in line with similar agreements.

The court also takes issue with Microsoft’s contention that the mere offer of allegedly unreasonable terms constitutes a breach of Motorola’s RAND commitment to license its patents on commercially reasonable terms. Quite sensibly, the court notes:

[T]he court is mindful that at the time of an initial offer, it is difficult for the offeror to know what would in fact constitute RAND terms for the offeree. Thus, what may appear to be RAND terms from the offeror’s perspective may be rejected out-of-pocket as non-RAND terms by the offeree. Indeed, it would appear that at any point in the negotiation process, the parties may have a genuine disagreement as to what terms and conditions of a license constitute RAND under the parties’ unique circumstances.

Resolution of such an impasse may ultimately fall to the courts. Thus the royalty rate issue is in fact closely related to the second issue raised by the EC’s investigation: the use or threat of injunction to enforce standards-essential patents.

While some scholars and many policy advocates claim that injunctions in the standards context raise the specter of costly hold-ups (patent holders extracting not only the market value of their patent, but also a portion of the costs that the infringer would incur if it had to implement its technology without the patent), there is no empirical evidence supporting the claim that patent holdup is a pervasive problem.

And the theory doesn’t comfortably support such a claim, either. Motorola, for example, has no interest in actually enforcing an injunction: Doing so is expensive and, notably, not nearly as good for the bottom line as actually receiving royalties from an agreed-upon contract. Instead, injunctions are, just like the more-attenuated liability suit for patent infringement, a central aspect of our intellectual property system, the means by which innovators and their financiers can reasonably expect a return on their substantial up-front investments in technology development.

Moreover, and apparently unbeknownst to those who claim that injunctions are the antithesis of negotiated solutions to licensing contests, the threat of injunction actually facilitates efficient transacting. Injunctions provide clearer penalties than damage awards for failing to reach consensus and are thus better at getting both parties on to the table with matched expectations. And this is especially true in the standards-setting context where the relevant parties are generally repeat players and where they very often have both patents to license and the need to license patents from the standard—both of which help to induce everyone to come to the table, lest they find themselves closed off from patents essential to their own products.

Antitrust intervention in standard setting negotiations based on an allegedly high initial royalty rate offer or the use of an injunction to enforce a patent is misdirected and costly. One of the clearest statements of the need for antitrust restraint in the standard setting context comes from a June 2011 comment filed with the FTC:

[T]he existence of a RAND commitment to offer patent licenses should not preclude a patent holder from seeking preliminary injunctive relief. . . . Any uniform declaration that such relief would not be available if the patent holder has made a commitment to offer a RAND license for its essential patent claims in connection with a standard may reduce any incentives that implementers might have to engage in good faith negotiations with the patent holder.

Most of the SSOs and their stakeholders that have considered these proposals over the years have determined that there are only a limited number of situations where patent hold-up takes place in the context of standards-setting. The industry has determined that those situations generally are best addressed through bi-lateral negotiation (and, in rare cases, litigation) as opposed to modifying the SSO’s IPR policy [by precluding injunctions or mandating a particular negotiation process].

The statement’s author? Why, Microsoft, of course.

Patents are an important tool for encouraging the development and commercialization of advanced technology, as are standard setting organizations. Antitrust authorities should exercise great restraint before intervening in the complex commercial negotiations over technology patents and standards. In Motorola’s case, the evidence of conduct that might harm competition is absent, and all that remains are, in essence, allegations that Motorola is bargaining hard and enforcing its property rights. The EC should let competition run its course.

Posted in antitrust, wireless | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The Law and Economics of Any Willing Provider Laws

Posted by Josh Wright on March 31, 2012

While I’m posting about health care regulation, I’d like to point TOTM readers to a short article with Jonathan Klick (University of Pennsylvania) summarizing the economics and empirical evidence surrounding “Any Willing Provider”(AWP) laws for the Washington Legal Foundation.   We write:

This analysis evaluates the antitrust law ramifications of proposals requiring pharmacy benefit managers (“PBMs”) to open up their networks to “any willing provider” meeting the same terms and  conditions as other network members. Providers which have failed to meet a PBM’s terms have frequently sought the enactment of any-willing-provider (“AWP”) legislation (or comparable administrative action). A recent federal proposal, The Pharmacy Competition and Consumer Choice Act of 2011 (“the Act”)1 — provides a useful model for this analysis. Both economic analysis and available empirical evidence suggest  the bill will harm consumers by restricting competition.

In the paper, we describe the anticompetitive effects of AWP legislation and the benefits of selective contracting which are undermined by such laws.  On the existing empirical evidence, we conclude:

The empirical research on the topic consistently indicates that AWP laws increase per capita  healthcare spending generally and pharmaceutical expenditures in particular directly. The related literature  on the effect of these laws on HMO penetration also suggests these laws may increase spending indirectly given that the laws lead to lower penetration and HMOs control costs better than indemnity insurance plans.  These results are consistent with economic theory regarding selective contracting.

The article is available here.

Posted in antitrust, economics, exclusive dealing, federal trade commission, health care, MFNs | Comments Off

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »
 
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,034 other followers