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What is the Appropriate Role for State Antitrust Enforcement?

Alden Abbott —  8 November 2021 — Leave a comment

In the U.S. system of dual federal and state sovereigns, a normative analysis reveals principles that could guide state antitrust-enforcement priorities, to promote complementarity in federal and state antitrust policy, and thereby advance consumer welfare.

Discussion

Positive analysis reveals that state antitrust enforcement is a firmly entrenched feature of American antitrust policy. The U.S. Supreme Court (1) has consistently held that federal antitrust law does not displace state antitrust law (see, for example, California v. ARC America Corp. (U.S., 1989) (“Congress intended the federal antitrust laws to supplement, not displace, state antitrust remedies”)); and (2) has upheld state antitrust laws even when they have some impact on interstate commerce (see, for example, Exxon Corp. v. Governor of Maryland (U.S., 1978)).

The normative question remains, however, as to what the appropriate relationship between federal and state antitrust enforcement should be. Should federal and state antitrust regimes be complementary, with state law enforcement enhancing the effectiveness of federal enforcement? Or should state antitrust enforcement compete with federal enforcement, providing an alternative “vision” of appropriate antitrust standards?

The generally accepted (until very recently) modern American consumer-welfare-centric antitrust paradigm (see here) points to the complementary approach as most appropriate. In other words, if antitrust is indeed the “magna carta” of American free enterprise (see United States v. Topco Associates, Inc., U.S. (U.S. 1972), and if consumer welfare is the paramount goal of antitrust (a position consistently held by the Supreme Court since Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., (U.S., 1979)), it follows that federal and state antitrust enforcement coexist best as complements, directed jointly at maximizing consumer-welfare enhancement. In recent decades it also generally has made sense for state enforcers to defer to U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) matter-specific consumer-welfare assessments. This conclusion follows from the federal agencies’ specialized resource advantage, reflected in large staffs of economic experts and attorneys with substantial industry knowledge.

The reality, nevertheless, is that while state enforcers often have cooperated with their federal colleagues on joint enforcement, state enforcement approaches historically have been imperfectly aligned with federal policy. That imperfect alignment has been at odds with consumer welfare in key instances. Certain state antitrust schemes, for example, continue to treat resale price maintenance (RPM)  as per se illegal (see, for example, here), a position inconsistent with the federal consumer welfare-centric rule of reason approach (see Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc. (U.S., 2007)). The disparate treatment of RPM has a substantial national impact on business conduct, because commercially important states such as California and New York are among those that continue to flatly condemn RPM.

State enforcers also have from time to time sought to oppose major transactions that received federal antitrust clearance, such as several states’ unsuccessful opposition to the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile merger (see here). Although the states failed to block the merger, they did extract settlement concessions that imposed burdens on the merging parties, in addition to the divestiture requirements impose by the DOJ in settling the matter (see here). Inconsistencies between federal and state antitrust-enforcement decisions on cases of nationwide significance generate litigation waste and may detract from final resolutions that optimize consumer welfare.

If consumer-welfare optimization is their goal (which I believe it should be in an ideal world), state attorneys general should seek to direct their limited antitrust resources to their highest valued uses, rather than seeking to second guess federal antitrust policy and enforcement decisions.

An optimal approach might focus first and foremost on allocating state resources to combat primarily intrastate competitive harms that are clear and unequivocal (such as intrastate bid rigging, hard core price fixing, and horizontal market division). This could free up federal resources to focus on matters that are primarily interstate in nature, consistent with federalism. (In this regard, see a thoughtful proposal by D. Bruce Johnsen and Moin A. Yaha.)

Second, state enforcers could also devote some resources to assist federal enforcers in developing state-specific evidence in support of major national cases. (This would allow state attorneys general to publicize their “big case” involvement in a productive manner.)

Third, but not least, competition advocacy directed at the removal of anticompetitive state laws and regulations could prove an effective means of seeking to improve the competitive climate within individual states (see, for example, here). State antitrust enforcers could advance advocacy through amicus curiae briefs, and (where politically feasible) through interventions (perhaps informal) with peer officials who oversee regulation. Subject to this general guidance, the nature of state antitrust resource allocations would depend upon the specific competitive problems particular to each state.

Of course, in the real world, public choice considerations and rent seeking may at times influence antitrust enforcement decision-making by state (and federal) officials. Nonetheless, the capsule idealized normative summary of a suggested ideal state antitrust-enforcement protocol is useful in that it highlights how state enforcers could usefully complement (assumed) sound federal antitrust initiatives.

Great minds think alike. A well-crafted and much more detailed normative exploration of ideal state antitrust enforcement is found in a recently released Pelican Institute policy brief by Ted Bolema and Eric Peterson. Entitled The Proper Role for States in Antitrust Lawsuits, the brief concludes (in a manner consistent with my observations):

This review of cases and leading commentaries shows that states should focus their involvement in antitrust cases on instances where:

· they have unique interests, such as local price-fixing

· play a unique role, such as where they can develop evidence about how alleged anticompetitive behavior uniquely affects local markets

· they can bring additional resources to bear on existing federal litigation.

States can also provide a useful check on overly aggressive federal enforcement by providing courts with a traditional perspective on antitrust law — a role that could become even more important as federal agencies aggressively seek to expand their powers. All of these are important roles for states to play in antitrust enforcement, and translate into positive outcomes that directly benefit consumers.

Conversely, when states bring significant, novel antitrust lawsuits on their own, they don’t tend to benefit either consumers or constituents. These novel cases often move resources away from where they might be used more effectively, and states usually lose (as with the recent dismissal with prejudice of a state case against Facebook). Through more strategic antitrust engagement, with a focus on what states can do well and where they can make a positive difference antitrust enforcement, states would best serve the interests of their consumers, constituents, and taxpayers.

Conclusion

Under a consumer-welfare-centric regime, an appropriate role can be identified for state antitrust enforcement that would helpfully complement federal efforts in an optimal fashion. Unfortunately, in this tumultuous period of federal antitrust policy shifts, in which the central role of the consumer welfare standard has been called into question, it might appear fatuous to speculate on the ideal melding of federal and state approaches to antitrust administration. One should, however, prepare for the time when a more enlightened, economically informed approach will be reinstituted. In anticipation of that day, serious thinking about antitrust federalism should not be neglected.

In Antitrust & Competition, Federal Trade Commission, Federalism, Justice Department, Merger Guidelines, Resale Price Maintenance, Truth on the Market, Wireless , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Consumer Welfare-Based Antitrust Enforcement is the Superior Means to Deal with Large Digital-Platform Competition Issues

Alden Abbott —  2 November 2021 — Leave a comment

There has been a rapid proliferation of proposals in recent years to closely regulate competition among large digital platforms. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA, which will become effective in 2023) imposes a variety of data-use, interoperability, and non-self-preferencing obligations on digital “gatekeeper” firms. A host of other regulatory schemes are being considered in Australia, France, Germany, and Japan, among other countries (for example, see here). The United Kingdom has established a Digital Markets Unit “to operationalise the future pro-competition regime for digital markets.” Recently introduced U.S. Senate and House Bills—although touted as “antitrust reform” legislation—effectively amount to “regulation in disguise” of disfavored business activities by very large companies,  including the major digital platforms (see here and here).

Sorely missing from these regulatory proposals is any sense of the fallibility of regulation. Indeed, proponents of new regulatory proposals seem to implicitly assume that government regulation of platforms will enhance welfare, ignoring real-life regulatory costs and regulatory failures (see here, for example). Without evidence, new regulatory initiatives are put forth as superior to long-established, consumer-based antitrust law enforcement.

The hope that new regulatory tools will somehow “solve” digital market competitive “problems” stems from the untested assumption that established consumer welfare-based antitrust enforcement is “not up to the task.” Untested assumptions, however, are an unsound guide to public policy decisions. Rather, in order to optimize welfare, all proposed government interventions in the economy, including regulation and antitrust, should be subject to decision-theoretic analysis that is designed to minimize the sum of error and decision costs (see here). What might such an analysis reveal?

Wonder no more. In a just-released Mercatus Center Working Paper, Professor Thom Lambert has conducted a decision-theoretic analysis that evaluates the relative merits of U.S. consumer welfare-based antitrust, ex ante regulation, and ongoing agency oversight in addressing the market power of large digital platforms. While explaining that antitrust and its alternatives have their respective costs and benefits, Lambert concludes that antitrust is the welfare-superior approach to dealing with platform competition issues. According to Lambert:

This paper provides a comparative institutional analysis of the leading approaches to addressing the market power of large digital platforms: (1) the traditional US antitrust approach; (2) imposition of ex ante conduct rules such as those in the EU’s Digital Markets Act and several bills recently advanced by the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives; and (3) ongoing agency oversight, exemplified by the UK’s newly established “Digital Markets Unit.” After identifying the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, this paper examines how they might play out in the context of digital platforms. It first examines whether antitrust is too slow and indeterminate to tackle market power concerns arising from digital platforms. It next considers possible error costs resulting from the most prominent proposed conduct rules. It then shows how three features of the agency oversight model—its broad focus, political susceptibility, and perpetual control—render it particularly vulnerable to rent-seeking efforts and agency capture. The paper concludes that antitrust’s downsides (relative indeterminacy and slowness) are likely to be less significant than those of ex ante conduct rules (large error costs resulting from high informational requirements) and ongoing agency oversight (rent-seeking and agency capture).

Lambert’s analysis should be carefully consulted by American legislators and potential rule-makers (including at the Federal Trade Commission) before they institute digital platform regulation. One also hopes that enlightened foreign competition officials will also take note of Professor Lambert’s well-reasoned study. 

In Antitrust & Competition, Economic Theory, Error Costs, European Union, Federal Trade Commission, International, Platforms, Regulation, Truth on the Market, United Kingdom , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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FTC Moves Closer Toward Ex Ante Merger Regulation

Alden Abbott —  28 October 2021
Large group of people in the shape of two puzzle pieces on a white background.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken another step away from case-specific evaluation of proposed mergers and toward an ex ante regulatory approach in its Oct. 25 “Statement of the Commission on Use of Prior Approval Provisions in Merger Orders.” Though not unexpected, this unfortunate initiative once again manifests the current FTC leadership’s disdain for long-accepted economically sound antitrust-enforcement principles.

Discussion

High levels of merger activity should, generally speaking, be viewed as a symptom of a vibrant economy, not a reason for economic concern. Horizontal mergers typically are driven by the potential to realize real cost savings, unrelated to anticompetitive reductions in output.

Non-horizontal mergers often put into force welfare-enhancing reductions of double marginalization, while uniting complements and achieving synergies in ways that seek efficiencies. More generally, proposed acquisitions frequently reflect an active market for corporate control that seeks to reallocate scarce resources to higher-valued uses (see, for example, Henry Manne’s seminal article on “Mergers and the Market for Corporate Control”). Finally, by facilitating cost reductions, synergies, and improvements in resource allocations within firms, mergers may allow the new consolidated entity to compete more effectively in the marketplace, thereby enhancing competition.

Given the economic benefits frequently generated by mergers, government antitrust enforcers should not discourage them, nor should they intervene to block them, absent a strong showing that a particular transaction would likely reduce competition and harm consumer welfare. In the United States, the Hart-Scott-Rodino Premerger Notification Act of 1976 (HSR) and its implementing regulations generally have reflected this understanding. They have done this by requiring that proposed transactions above a certain size threshold be notified to the FTC and the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ), and by providing a framework for timely review, allowing most notified mergers to close promptly.

In the relatively few cases where agency enforcement staff have identified competitive problems, the HSR framework usually has enabled timely negotiation of possible competitive fixes (divestitures and, less typically, behavioral remedies). Where fixes have not been feasible, filing parties generally have been able to decide whether to drop a transaction or prepare for litigation within a reasonable time period. Under the HSR framework, enforcers generally have respected the time sensitivity of merger proposals and acted expeditiously (with a few exceptions) to review complicated and competitively sensitive transactions. The vast majority of HSR filings that facially raise no plausible competitive issues historically have been dealt with swiftly—often through “early termination” policies that provide the merging parties an antitrust go-ahead well before the end of HSR’s initial 30-day review period.

In short, although far from perfect, HSR processes have sought to minimize regulatory impediments to merger activity, consistent with the statutory mandate to identify and prevent anticompetitive mergers.      

Regrettably, under the leadership of Chair Lina M. Khan, the FTC has taken unprecedented steps to undermine the well-understood HSR framework. As I wrote recently:

For decades, parties proposing mergers that are subject to statutory Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act pre-merger notification requirements have operated under the understanding that:

1. The FTC and U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) will routinely grant “early termination” of review (before the end of the initial 30-day statutory review period) to those transactions posing no plausible competitive threat; and

2. An enforcement agency’s decision not to request more detailed documents (“second requests”) after an initial 30-day pre-merger review effectively serves as an antitrust “green light” for the proposed acquisition to proceed.

Those understandings, though not statutorily mandated, have significantly reduced antitrust uncertainty and related costs in the planning of routine merger transactions. The rule of law has been advanced through an effective assurance that business combinations that appear presumptively lawful will not be the target of future government legal harassment. This has advanced efficiency in government, as well; it is a cost-beneficial optimal use of resources for DOJ and the FTC to focus exclusively on those proposed mergers that present a substantial potential threat to consumer welfare.

Two recent FTC pronouncements (one in tandem with DOJ), however, have generated great uncertainty by disavowing (at least temporarily) those two welfare-promoting review policies. Joined by DOJ, the FTC on Feb. 4 announced that the agencies would temporarily suspend early terminations, citing an “unprecedented volume of filings” and a transition to new leadership. More than six months later, this “temporary” suspension remains in effect.

Citing “capacity constraints” and a “tidal wave of merger filings,” the FTC subsequently published an Aug. 3 blog post that effectively abrogated the 30-day “green lighting” of mergers not subject to a second request. It announced that it was sending “warning letters” to firms reminding them that FTC investigations remain open after the initial 30-day period, and that “[c]ompanies that choose to proceed with transactions that have not been fully investigated are doing so at their own risk.”

The FTC’s actions interject unwarranted uncertainty into merger planning and undermine the rule of law. Preventing early termination on transactions that have been approved routinely not only imposes additional costs on business; it hints that some transactions might be subject to novel theories of liability that fall outside the antitrust consensus.

The FTC’s merger-review reign of error continues. Most recently, it released a policy guidance statement that effectively transforms the commission into a merger regulator whose assent is required for a specific category of mergers. This policy is at odds with HSR, which is designed to facilitate merger reviews, not to serve as a regulatory-approval mechanism. As the FTC explains in its Oct. 25 statement(citation to 1995 Statement omitted) (approved by a 3-2 vote, with Commissioners Noah Joshua Phillips and Christine S. Wilson dissenting):

On July 21, 2021, the Commission voted to rescind the 1995 Policy Statement on Prior Approval and Prior Notice Provisions (“1995 Statement”). The 1995 Statement ended the Commission’s then-longstanding practice of incorporating prior approval and prior notice provisions in Commission orders addressing mergers. With the rescission of the 1995 statement, the Commission returns now to its prior practice of routinely requiring merging parties subject to a Commission order to obtain prior approval from the FTC before closing any future transaction affecting each relevant market for which a violation was alleged. . . .

In addition, from now on, in matters where the Commission issues a complaint to block a merger and the parties subsequently abandon the transaction, the agency will engage in a case-specific determination as to whether to pursue a prior approval order, focusing on the factors identified below with respect to use of broader prior approval provisions. The fact that parties may abandon a merger after litigation commences does not guarantee that the

Commission will not subsequently pursue an order incorporating a prior approval provision. . . .
In some situations where stronger relief is needed, the Commission may decide to seek a prior approval provision that covers product and geographic markets beyond just the relevant product and geographic markets affected by the merger. No single factor is dispositive; rather, the Commission will take a holistic view of the circumstances when determining the length and breadth of prior approval provisions. [Six factors listed include the nature of the transaction; the level of market concentration; the degree to which the transaction increases concentration; the degree to which one of the parties pre-merger likely had market power; the parties’ history of acquisitiveness; and evidence of anticompetitive market dynamics.]

The Oct. 25 Statement is highly problematic in several respects. Its oversight requirements may discourage highly effective consent decree “fixes” of potential mergers, leading to wasteful litigation—or, alternatively, the abandonment of efficient transactions. What’s more, the threat of FTC prior approval orders (based on multiple criteria subject to manipulation by the FTC), even when parties abandon a proposed transaction (and thus, effectively have “done nothing”), smacks of unwarranted regulation of future corporate plans of disfavored firms, raising questions of fundamental fairness.

All told, the new requirements, combined with the FTC’s policies to end early terminations and to stop “greenlighting” routine merger transactions after a 30-day review, are yet signs that the well-understood HSR consensus has been unilaterally abandoned by the FTC, based on purely partisan commission votes, despite the lack of any public consultation. The FTC’s abrupt and arbitrary merger-review-related actions will harm the economy by discouraging welfare-promoting consolidations. These actions also fly in the face of sound public administration.  

Conclusion

The FTC continues to move from its historic role of antitrust enforcer to that of antitrust regulator at warp speed, based on a series of 3-2 votes. In particular, the commission’s abandonment of a well-established bipartisan approach to HSR policy is particularly troublesome, given the new risks it creates for private parties considering acquisitions. These new risks will likely deter an unknown number of efficiency-enhancing, innovative combinations that could have benefited consumers and substantially strengthened the American economy.

Perhaps the imminent confirmation of Jonathan Kanter—an individual with many years of practical experience as a leading antitrust practitioner—to be assistant attorney general for antitrust will bring a more reasonable perspective to antitrust agency HSR policies. It may even convince a majority of the commission to return to the bipartisan HSR merger-review framework that has served the American economy well.

If not, perhaps congressional overseers might wish to investigate the implications for the American innovation economy and the rule of law stemming from the FTC’s de facto abandonment of HSR principles. Whether to fundamentally alter merger-review procedures should be up to Congress, not to three unelected officials.    

In Antitrust & Competition, Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department, Merger Guidelines, Truth on the Market , , , , , , ,
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‘New Madison Approach’ Should Be Retained to Promote American Innovation

Alden Abbott —  27 October 2021

The leading contribution to sound competition policy made by former Assistant U.S. Attorney General Makan Delrahim was his enunciation of the “New Madison Approach” to patent-antitrust enforcement—and, in particular, to the antitrust treatment of standard essential patent licensing (see, for example, here, here, and here). In short (citations omitted):

The New Madison Approach (“NMA”) advanced by former Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Makan Delrahim is a simple analytical framework for understanding the interplay between patents and antitrust law arising out of standard setting. A key aspect of the NMA is its rejection of the application of antitrust law to the “hold-up” problem, whereby patent holders demand supposedly supra-competitive licensing fees to grant access to their patents that “read on” a standard – standard essential patents (“SEPs”). This scenario is associated with an SEP holder’s prior commitment to a standard setting organization (“SSO”), that is: if its patented technology is included in a proposed new standard, it will license its patents on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (“FRAND”) terms. “Hold-up” is said to arise subsequently, when the SEP holder reneges on its FRAND commitment and demands that a technology implementer pay higher-than-FRAND licensing fees to access its SEPs.

The NMA has four basic premises that are aimed at ensuring that patent holders have adequate incentives to innovate and create welfare-enhancing new technologies, and that licensees have appropriate incentives to implement those technologies:

1. Hold-up is not an antitrust problem. Accordingly, an antitrust remedy is not the correct tool to resolve patent licensing disputes between SEP-holders and implementers of a standard.

2. SSOs should not allow collective actions by standard-implementers to disfavor patent holders in setting the terms of access to patents that cover a new standard.

3. A fundamental element of patent rights is the right to exclude. As such, SSOs and courts should be hesitant to restrict SEP holders’ right to exclude implementers from access to their patents, by, for example, seeking injunctions.

4. Unilateral and unconditional decisions not to license a patent should be per se legal.

Delrahim emphasizes that the threat of antitrust liability, specifically treble damages, distorts the incentives associated with good faith negotiations with SSOs over patent inclusion. Contract law, he goes on to note, is perfectly capable of providing an ex post solution to licensing disputes between SEP holders and implementers of a standard. Unlike antitrust law, a contract law framework allows all parties equal leverage in licensing negotiations.

As I have explained elsewhere, the NMA is best seen as a set of policies designed to spark dynamic economic growth:

[P]atented technology serves as a catalyst for the wealth-creating diffusion of innovation. This occurs through numerous commercialization methods; in the context of standardized technologies, the development of standards is a process of discovery. At each [SSO], the process of discussion and negotiation between engineers, businesspersons, and all other relevant stakeholders reveals the relative value of alternative technologies and tends to result in the best patents being integrated into a standard.

The NMA supports this process of discovery and implementation of the best patented technology born of the labors of the innovators who created it. As a result, the NMA ensures SEP valuations that allow SEP holders to obtain an appropriate return for the new economic surplus that results from the commercialization of standard-engendered innovations. It recognizes that dynamic economic growth is fostered through the incentivization of innovative activities backed by patents.

In sum, the NMA seeks to promote innovation by offering incentives for SEP-driven technological improvements. As such, it rejects as ill-founded prior Federal Trade Commission (FTC) litigation settlements and Obama-era U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) Antitrust Division policy statements that artificially favored implementor licensees’ interests over those of SEP licensors (see here).

In light of the NMA, DOJ cooperated with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in issuing a 2019 SEP Policy Statement clarifying that an SEP holder’s promise to license a patent on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms does not bar it from seeking any available remedy for patent infringement, including an injunction. This signaled that SEPs and non-SEP patents enjoy equivalent legal status.

DOJ also issued a 2020 supplement to its 2015 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) business review letter. The 2015 letter had found no legal fault with revised IEEE standard-setting policies that implicitly favored implementers of standardized technology over SEP holders. The 2020 supplement characterized key elements of the 2015 letter as “outdated,” and noted that the anti-SEP bias of that document could “harm competition and chill innovation.”   

Furthermore, DOJ issued a July 2019 Statement of Interest before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in FTC v. Qualcomm, explaining that unilateral and unconditional decisions not to license a patent are legal under the antitrust laws. In October 2020, the 9th Circuit reversed a district court decision and rejected the FTC’s monopolization suit against Qualcomm. The circuit court, among other findings, held that Qualcomm had no antitrust duty to license its SEPs to competitors.

Regrettably, the Biden Administration appears to be close to rejecting the NMA and to reinstituting the anti-strong patents SEP-skeptical views of the Obama administration (see here and here). DOJ already has effectively repudiated the 2020 supplement to the 2015 IEEE letter and the 2019 SEP Policy Statement. Furthermore, written responses to Senate Judiciary Committee questions by assistant attorney general nominee Jonathan Kanter suggest support for renewed antitrust scrutiny of SEP licensing. These developments are highly problematic if one supports dynamic economic growth.

Conclusion

The NMA represents a pro-American, pro-growth innovation policy prescription. Its abandonment would reduce incentives to invest in patents and standard-setting activities, to the detriment of the U.S. economy. Such a development would be particularly unfortunate at a time when U.S. Supreme Court decisions have weakened American patent rights (see here); China is taking steps to strengthen Chinese patents and raise incentives to obtain Chinese patents (see here); and China is engaging in litigation to weaken key U.S. patents and undermine American technological leadership (see here).

The rejection of NMA would also be in tension with the logic of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2021 HTC v. Ericsson decision, which held that the non-discrimination portion of the FRAND commitment required Ericsson to give HTC the same licensing terms as given to larger mobile-device manufacturers. Furthermore, recent important European court decisions are generally consistent with NMA principles (see here).

Given the importance of dynamic competition in an increasingly globalized world economy, Biden administration officials may wish to take a closer look at the economic arguments supporting the NMA before taking final action to condemn it. Among other things, the administration might take note that major U.S. digital platforms, which are the subject of multiple U.S. and foreign antitrust enforcement investigations, tend to firmly oppose strong patents rights. As one major innovation economist recently pointed out:

If policymakers and antitrust gurus are so concerned about stemming the rising power of Big Tech platforms, they should start by first stopping the relentless attack on IP. Without the IP system, only the big and powerful have the privilege to innovate[.]

In Antitrust & Competition, Antitrust Division, China, Federal Trade Commission, Intellectual Property, International, Justice Department, Patent, Platforms, Standard Setting, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Broad-Based FTC Data-Privacy and Security Rulemaking Would Flunk a Cost-Benefit Test

Alden Abbott —  13 October 2021

A debate has broken out among the four sitting members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in connection with the recently submitted FTC Report to Congress on Privacy and Security. Chair Lina Khan argues that the commission “must explore using its rulemaking tools to codify baseline protections,” while Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter has urged the FTC to initiate a broad-based rulemaking proceeding on data privacy and security. By contrast, Commissioners Noah Joshua Phillips and Christine Wilson counsel against a broad-based regulatory initiative on privacy.

Decisions to initiate a rulemaking should be viewed through a cost-benefit lens (See summaries of Thom Lambert’s masterful treatment of regulation, of which rulemaking is a subset, here and here). Unless there is a market failure, rulemaking is not called for. Even in the face of market failure, regulation should not be adopted unless it is more cost-beneficial than reliance on markets (including the ability of public and private litigation to address market-failure problems, such as data theft). For a variety of reasons, it is unlikely that FTC rulemaking directed at privacy and data security would pass a cost-benefit test.

Discussion

As I have previously explained (see here and here), FTC rulemaking pursuant to Section 6(g) of the FTC Act (which authorizes the FTC “to make rules and regulations for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of this subchapter”) is properly read as authorizing mere procedural, not substantive, rules. As such, efforts to enact substantive competition rules would not pass a cost-benefit test. Such rules could well be struck down as beyond the FTC’s authority on constitutional law grounds, and as “arbitrary and capricious” on administrative law grounds. What’s more, they would represent retrograde policy. Competition rules would generate higher error costs than adjudications; could be deemed to undermine the rule of law, because the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) could not apply such rules; and innovative efficiency-seeking business arrangements would be chilled.

Accordingly, the FTC likely would not pursue 6(g) rulemaking should it decide to address data security and privacy, a topic which best fits under the “consumer protection” category. Rather, the FTC presumably would most likely initiate a “Magnuson-Moss” rulemaking (MMR) under Section 18 of the FTC Act, which authorizes the commission to prescribe “rules which define with specificity acts or practices which are unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce within the meaning of Section 5(a)(1) of the Act.” Among other things, Section 18 requires that the commission’s rulemaking proceedings provide an opportunity for informal hearings at which interested parties are accorded limited rights of cross-examination. Also, before commencing an MMR proceeding, the FTC must have reason to believe the practices addressed by the rulemaking are “prevalent.” 15 U.S.C. Sec. 57a(b)(3).

MMR proceedings, which are not governed under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), do not present the same degree of legal problems as Section 6(g) rulemakings (see here). The question of legal authority to adopt a substantive rule is not raised; “rule of law” problems are far less serious (the DOJ is not a parallel enforcer of consumer-protection law); and APA issues of “arbitrariness” and “capriciousness” are not directly presented. Indeed, MMR proceedings include a variety of procedures aimed at promoting fairness (see here, for example). An MMR proceeding directed at data privacy predictably would be based on the claim that the failure to adhere to certain data-protection norms is an “unfair act or practice.”

Nevertheless, MMR rules would be subject to two substantial sources of legal risk.

The first of these arises out of federalism. Three states (California, Colorado, and Virginia) recently have enacted comprehensive data-privacy laws, and a large number of other state legislatures are considering data-privacy bills (see here). The proliferation of state data-privacy statutes would raise the risk of inconsistent and duplicative regulatory norms, potentially chilling business innovations addressed at data protection (a severe problem in the Internet Age, when business data-protection programs typically will have interstate effects).

An FTC MMR data-protection regulation that successfully “occupied the field” and preempted such state provisions could eliminate that source of costs. The Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act, however, does not contain an explicit preemption clause, leaving in serious doubt the ability of an FTC rule to displace state regulations (see here for a summary of the murky state of preemption law, including the skepticism of textualist Supreme Court justices toward implied “obstacle preemption”). In particular, the long history of state consumer-protection and antitrust laws that coexist with federal laws suggests that the case for FTC rule-based displacement of state data protection is a weak one. The upshot, then, of a Section 18 FTC data-protection rule enactment could be “the worst of all possible worlds,” with drawn-out litigation leading to competing federal and state norms that multiplied business costs.

The second source of risk arises out of the statutory definition of “unfair practices,” found in Section 5(n) of the FTC Act. Section 5(n) codifies the meaning of unfair practices, and thereby constrains the FTC’s application of rulemakings covering such practices. Section 5(n) states:

The Commission shall have no authority . . . to declare unlawful an act or practice on the grounds that such an act or practice is unfair unless the act or practice causes or is likely to cause substantial injury to consumers which is not reasonably avoidable by consumers themselves and not outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or to competition. In determining whether an act or practice is unfair, the Commission may consider established public policies as evidence to be considered with all other evidence. Such public policy considerations may not serve as a primary basis for such determination.

In effect, Section 5(n) implicitly subjects unfair practices to a well-defined cost-benefit framework. Thus, in promulgating a data-privacy MMR, the FTC first would have to demonstrate that specific disfavored data-protection practices caused or were likely to cause substantial harm. What’s more, the commission would have to show that any actual or likely harm would not be outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or competition. One would expect that a data-privacy rulemaking record would include submissions that pointed to the efficiencies of existing data-protection policies that would be displaced by a rule.

Moreover, subsequent federal court challenges to a final FTC rule likely would put forth the consumer and competitive benefits sacrificed by rule requirements. For example, rule challengers might point to the added business costs passed on to consumers that would arise from particular rule mandates, and the diminution in competition among data-protection systems generated by specific rule provisions. Litigation uncertainties surrounding these issues could be substantial and would cast into further doubt the legal viability of any final FTC data protection rule.

Apart from these legal risk-based costs, an MMR data privacy predictably would generate error-based costs. Given imperfect information in the hands of government and the impossibility of achieving welfare-maximizing nirvana through regulation (see, for example, here), any MMR data-privacy rule would erroneously condemn some economically inefficient business protocols and disincentivize some efficiency-seeking behavior. The Section 5(n) cost-benefit framework, though helpful, would not eliminate such error. (For example, even bureaucratic efforts to accommodate some business suggestions during the rulemaking process might tilt the post-rule market in favor of certain business models, thereby distorting competition.) In the abstract, it is difficult to say whether the welfare benefits of a final MMA data-privacy rule (measured by reductions in data-privacy-related consumer harm) would outweigh the costs, even before taking legal costs into account.

Conclusion

At least two FTC commissioners (and likely a third, assuming that President Joe Biden’s highly credentialed nominee Alvaro Bedoya will be confirmed by the U.S. Senate) appear to support FTC data-privacy regulation, even in the absence of new federal legislation. Such regulation, which presumably would be adopted as an MMR pursuant to Section 18 of the FTC Act, would probably not prove cost-beneficial. Not only would adoption of a final data-privacy rule generate substantial litigation costs and uncertainty, it would quite possibly add an additional layer of regulatory burdens above and beyond the requirements of proliferating state privacy rules. Furthermore, it is impossible to say whether the consumer-privacy benefits stemming from such an FTC rule would outweigh the error costs (manifested through competitive distortions and consumer harm) stemming from the inevitable imperfections of the rule’s requirements. All told, these considerations counsel against the allocation of scarce FTC resources to a Section 18 data-privacy rulemaking initiative.

But what about legislation? New federal privacy legislation that explicitly preempted state law would eliminate costs arising from inconsistencies among state privacy rules. Ideally, if such legislation were to be pursued, it should to the extent possible embody a cost-benefit framework designed to minimize the sum of administrative (including litigation) and error costs. The nature of such a possible law, and the role the FTC might play in administering it, however, is a topic for another day.

In Administrative Law, Antitrust & Competition, Constitutional Law, Data Privacy & Security, Error Costs, Federal Trade Commission, Federalism, Jurisdictional Competition, Justice Department, Regulation, Section 5, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Khan’s ‘Vision and Priorities for the FTC’ Statement Lacks Humility and Strategic Insight

Alden Abbott —  27 September 2021

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan’s Sept. 22 memorandum to FTC commissioners and staff—entitled “Vision and Priorities for the FTC” (VP Memo)—offers valuable insights into the chair’s strategy and policy agenda for the commission. Unfortunately, it lacks an appreciation for the limits of antitrust and consumer-protection law; it also would have benefited from greater regulatory humility. After summarizing the VP Memo’s key sections, I set forth four key takeaways from this rather unusual missive.

Introduction

The VP Memo begins appropriately enough, with praise for commission staff and a call to focus on key FTC strategic priorities and operational objectives. So far, so good. Regrettably, the introductory section is the memo’s strongest feature.

Strategic Approach

The VP Memo’s first substantive section, which lays out Khan’s strategic approach, raises questions that require further clarification.

This section is long on glittering generalities. First, it begins with the need to take a “holistic approach” that recognizes law violations harm workers and independent businesses, as well as consumers. Legal violations that reflect “power asymmetries” and harm to “marginalized communities” are emphasized, but not defined. Are new enforcement standards to supplement or displace consumer welfare enhancement being proposed?

Second, similar ambiguity surrounds the need to target enforcement efforts toward “root causes” of unlawful conduct, rather than “one-off effects.” Root causes are said to involve “structural incentives that enable unlawful conduct” (such as conflicts of interest, business models, or structural dominance), as well as “upstream” examination of firms that profit from such conduct. How these observations may be “operationalized” into case-selection criteria (and why these observations are superior to alternative means for spotting illegal behavior) is left unexplained.

Third, the section endorses a more “rigorous and empiricism-driven approach” to the FTC’s work, a “more interdisciplinary approach” that incorporates “a greater range of analytical tools and skillsets.” This recommendation is not problematic on its face, though it is a bit puzzling. The FTC already relies heavily on economics and empirical work, as well as input from technologists, advertising specialists, and other subject matter experts, as required. What other skillsets are being endorsed? (A more far-reaching application of economic thinking in certain consumer-protection cases would be helpful, but one suspects that is not the point of the paragraph.)

Fourth, the need to be especially attentive to next-generation technologies, innovations, and nascent industries is trumpeted. Fine, but the FTC already does that in its competition and consumer-protection investigations.

Finally, the need to “democratize” the agency is highlighted, to keep the FTC in tune with “the real problems that Americans are facing in their daily lives and using that understanding to inform our work.” This statement seems to imply that the FTC is not adequately dealing with “real problems.” The FTC, however, has not been designated by Congress to be a general-purpose problem solver. Rather, the agency has a specific statutory remit to combat anticompetitive activity and unfair acts or practices that harm consumers. Ironically, under Chair Khan, the FTC has abruptly implemented major changes in key areas (including rulemaking, the withdrawal of guidance, and merger-review practices) without prior public input or consultation among the commissioners (see, for example, here)—actions that could be deemed undemocratic.

Policy Priorities

The memo’s brief discussion of Khan’s policy priorities raises three significant concerns.

First, Khan stresses the “need to address rampant consolidation and the dominance that it has enabled across markets” in the areas of merger enforcement and dominant-firm scrutiny. The claim that competition has substantially diminished has been critiqued by leading economists, and is dubious at best (see, for example, here). This flat assertion is jarring, and in tension with the earlier call for more empirical analysis. Khan’s call for revision of the merger guidelines (presumably both horizontal and vertical), in tandem with the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ), will be headed for trouble if it departs from the economic reasoning that has informed prior revisions of those guidelines. (The memo’s critical and cryptic reference to the “narrow and outdated framework” of recent guidelines provides no clue as to the new guidelines format that Chair Khan might deem acceptable.) 

Second, the chair supports prioritizing “dominant intermediaries” and “extractive business models,” while raising concerns about “private equity and other investment vehicles” that “strip productive capacity” and “target marginalized communities.” No explanation is given as to why such prioritization will best utilize the FTC’s scarce resources to root out harmful anticompetitive behavior and consumer-protection harms. By assuming from the outset that certain “unsavory actors” merit prioritization, this discussion also is in tension with an empirical approach that dispassionately examines the facts in determining how resources should best be allocated to maximize the benefits of enforcement.

Third, the chair wants to direct special attention to “one-sided contract provisions” that place “[c]onsumers, workers, franchisees, and other market participants … at a significant disadvantage.” Non-competes, repair restrictions, and exclusionary clauses are mentioned as examples. What is missing is a realistic acknowledgement of the legal complications that would be involved in challenging such provisions, and a recognition of possible welfare benefits that such restraints could generate under many circumstances. In that vein, mere perceived inequalities in bargaining power alluded to in the discussion do not, in and of themselves, constitute antitrust or consumer-protection violations.

Operational Objectives

The closing section, on “operational objectives,” is not particularly troublesome. It supports an “integrated approach” to enforcement and policy tools, and endorses “breaking down silos” between competition (BC) and consumer-protection (BCP) staff. (Of course, while greater coordination between BC and BCP occasionally may be desirable, competition and consumer-protection cases will continue to feature significant subject matter and legal differences.) It also calls for greater diversity in recruitment and a greater staffing emphasis on regional offices. Finally, it endorses bringing in more experts from “outside disciplines” and more rigorous analysis of conduct, remedies, and market studies. These points, although not controversial, do not directly come to grip with questions of optimal resource allocation within the agency, which the FTC will have to address.

Evaluating the VP Memo: 4 Key Takeaways

The VP Memo is a highly aggressive call-to-arms that embodies Chair Khan’s full-blown progressive vision for the FTC. There are four key takeaways:

  1. Promoting the consumer interest, which for decades has been the overarching principle in both FTC antitrust and consumer-protection cases (which address different sources of consumer harm), is passé. Protecting consumers is only referred to in passing. Rather, the concerns of workers, “honest businesses,” and “marginalized communities” are emphasized. Courts will, however, continue to focus on established consumer-welfare and consumer-harm principles in ruling on antitrust and consumer-protection cases. If the FTC hopes to have any success in winning future cases based on novel forms of harm, it will have to ensure that its new case-selection criteria also emphasize behavior that harms consumers.
  2. Despite multiple references to empiricism and analytical rigor, the VP Memo ignores the potential economic-welfare benefits of the categories of behavior it singles out for condemnation. The memo’s critiques of “middlemen,” “gatekeepers,” “extractive business models,” “private equity,” and various types of vertical contracts, reference conduct that frequently promotes efficiency, generating welfare benefits for producers and consumers. Even if FTC lawsuits or regulations directed at these practices fail, the business uncertainty generated by the critiques could well disincentivize efficient forms of conduct that spark innovation and economic growth.
  3. The VP Memo in effect calls for new enforcement initiatives that challenge conduct different in nature from FTC cases brought in recent decades. This implicit support for lawsuits that would go well beyond existing judicial interpretations of the FTC’s competition and consumer-protection authority reflects unwarranted hubris. This April, in the AMG case, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected the FTC’s argument that it had implicit authority to obtain monetary relief under Section 13(b) of the FTC Act, which authorizes permanent injunctions – despite the fact that several appellate courts had found such authority existed. The Court stated that the FTC could go to Congress if it wanted broader authority. This decision bodes ill for any future FTC efforts to expand its authority into new realms of “unfair” activity through “creative” lawyering.
  4. Chair Khan’s unilateral statement of her policy priorities embodied in the VP Memo bespeaks a lack of humility. It ignores a long history of consensus FTC statements on agency priorities, reflected in numerous commission submissions to congressional committees in connection with oversight hearings. Although commissioners have disagreed on specific policy statements or enforcement complaints, general “big picture” policy statements to congressional overseers typically have been by unanimous vote. By ignoring this tradition, the VP Memo departs from a longstanding bipartisan tradition that will tend to undermine the FTC’s image as a serious deliberative body that seeks to reconcile varying viewpoints (while recognizing that, at times, different positions will be expressed on particular matters). If the FTC acts more and more like a one-person executive agency, why does it need to be “independent,” and, indeed, what special purpose does it serve as a second voice on federal antitrust matters? Under seeming unilateral rule, the prestige of the FTC before federal courts may suffer, undermining its effectiveness in defending enforcement actions and promulgating rules. This will particularly be the case if more and more FTC decisions are taken by a 3-2 vote and appear to reflect little or no consultation with minority commissioners.

Conclusion

The VP Memo reflects a lack of humility and strategic insight. It sets forth priorities that are disconnected from the traditional core of the FTC’s consumer-welfare-centric mission. It emphasizes new sorts of initiatives that are likely to “crash and burn” in the courts, unless they are better anchored to established case law and FTC enforcement principles. As a unilateral missive announcing an unprecedented change in policy direction, the memo also undermines the tradition of collegiality and reasoned debate that generally has characterized the commission’s activities in recent decades.

As such, the memo will undercut, not advance, the effectiveness of FTC advocacy before the courts. It will also undermine the FTC’s reputation as a truly independent deliberative body. Accordingly, one may hope that Chair Khan will rethink her approach, withdraw the VP Memo, and work with all of her fellow commissioners to recraft a new consensus policy document.   

In Antitrust & Competition, Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department, Merger Guidelines, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , , , ,
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More Evidence that the Patent System Promotes Dynamic Competition and Consumer Welfare

Alden Abbott —  7 September 2021

The patent system is too often caricatured as involving the grant of “monopolies” that may be used to delay entry and retard competition in key sectors of the economy. The accumulation of allegedly “poor-quality” patents into thickets and portfolios held by “patent trolls” is said by critics to spawn excessive royalty-licensing demands and threatened “holdups” of firms that produce innovative products and services. These alleged patent abuses have been characterized as a wasteful “tax” on high-tech implementers of patented technologies, which inefficiently raises price and harms consumer welfare.

Fortunately, solid scholarship has debunked these stories and instead pointed to the key role patents play in enhancing competition and driving innovation. See, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Nevertheless, early indications are that the Biden administration may be adopting a patent-skeptical attitude. Such an attitude was revealed, for example, in the president’s July 9 Executive Order on Competition (which suggested an openness to undermining the Bayh-Dole Act by using march-in rights to set prices; to weakening pharmaceutical patent rights; and to weakening standard essential patents) and in the administration’s inexplicable decision to waive patent protection for COVID-19 vaccines (see here and here).

Before it takes further steps that would undermine patent protections, the administration should consider new research that underscores how patents help to spawn dynamic market growth through “design around” competition and through licensing that promotes new technologies and product markets.

Patents Spawn Welfare-Enhancing ‘Design Around’ Competition

Critics sometimes bemoan the fact that patents covering a new product or technology allegedly retard competition by preventing new firms from entering a market. (Never mind the fact that the market might not have existed but for the patent.) This thinking, which confuses a patent with a product-market monopoly, is badly mistaken. It is belied by the fact that the publicly available patented technology itself (1) provides valuable information to third parties; and (2) thereby incentivizes them to innovate and compete by refining technologies that fall outside the scope of the patent. In short, patents on important new technologies stimulate, rather than retard, competition. They do this by leading third parties to “design around” the patented technology and thus generate competition that features a richer set of technological options realized in new products.

The importance of design around is revealed, for example, in the development of the incandescent light bulb market in the late 19th century, in reaction to Edison’s patent on a long-lived light bulb. In a 2021 article in the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Ron D. Katznelson and John Howells did an empirical study of this important example of product innovation. The article’s synopsis explains:

Designing around patents is prevalent but not often appreciated as a means by which patents promote economic development through competition. We provide a novel empirical study of the extent and timing of designing around patent claims. We study the filing rate of incandescent lamp-related patents during 1878–1898 and find that the enforcement of Edison’s incandescent lamp patent in 1891–1894 stimulated a surge of patenting. We studied the specific design features of the lamps described in these lamp patents and compared them with Edison’s claimed invention to create a count of noninfringing designs by filing date. Most of these noninfringing designs circumvented Edison’s patent claims by creating substitute technologies to enable participation in the market. Our forward citation analysis of these patents shows that some had introduced pioneering prior art for new fields. This indicates that invention around patents is not duplicative research and contributes to dynamic economic efficiency. We show that the Edison lamp patent did not suppress advance in electric lighting and the market power of the Edison patent owner weakened during this patent’s enforcement. We propose that investigation of the effects of design around patents is essential for establishing the degree of market power conferred by patents.

In a recent commentary, Katznelson highlights the procompetitive consumer welfare benefits of the Edison light bulb design around:

GE’s enforcement of the Edison patent by injunctions did not stifle competition nor did it endow GE with undue market power, let alone a “monopoly.” Instead, it resulted in clear and tangible consumer welfare benefits. Investments in design-arounds resulted in tangible and measurable dynamic economic efficiencies by (a) increased competition, (b) lamp price reductions, (c) larger choice of suppliers, (d) acceleration of downstream development of new electric illumination technologies, and (e) collateral creation of new technologies that would not have been developed for some time but for the need to design around Edison’s patent claims. These are all imparted benefits attributable to patent enforcement.

Katznelson further explains that “the mythical harm to innovation inflicted by enforcers of pioneer patents is not unique to the Edison case.” He cites additional research debunking claims that the Wright brothers’ pioneer airplane patent seriously retarded progress in aviation (“[a]ircraft manufacturing and investments grew at an even faster pace after the assertion of the Wright Brothers’ patent than before”) and debunking similar claims made about the early radio industry and the early automobile industry. He also notes strong research refuting the patent holdup conjecture regarding standard essential patents. He concludes by bemoaning “infringers’ rhetoric” that “suppresses information on the positive aspects of patent enforcement, such as the design-around effects that we study in this article.”

The Bayh-Dole Act: Licensing that Promotes New Technologies and Product Markets

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 has played an enormously important role in accelerating American technological innovation by creating a property rights-based incentive to use government labs. As this good summary from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization puts it, it “[e]mpowers universities, small businesses and non-profit institutions to take ownership [through patent rights] of inventions made during federally-funded research, so they can license these basic inventions for further applied research and development and broader public use.”

The act has continued to generate many new welfare-enhancing technologies and related high-tech business opportunities even during the “COVID slowdown year” of 2020, according to a newly released survey by a nonprofit organization representing the technology management community (see here):  

° The number of startup companies launched around academic inventions rose from 1,040 in 2019 to 1,117 in 2020. Almost 70% of these companies locate in the same state as the research institution that licensed them—making Bayh-Dole a critical driver of state and regional economic development;
° Invention disclosures went from 25,392 to 27,112 in 2020;
° New patent applications increased from 15,972 to 17,738;
° Licenses and options went from 9,751 in ’19 to 10,050 in ’20, with 60% of licenses going to small companies; and
° Most impressive of all—new products introduced to the market based on academic inventions jumped from 711 in 2019 to 933 in 2020.

Despite this continued record of success, the Biden Administration has taken actions that create uncertainty about the government’s support for Bayh-Dole.  

As explained by the Congressional Research Service, “march-in rights allow the government, in specified circumstances, to require the contractor or successors in title to the patent to grant a ‘nonexclusive, partially exclusive, or exclusive license’ to a ‘responsible applicant or applicants.’ If the patent owner refuses to do so, the government may grant the license itself.” Government march-in rights thus far have not been invoked, but a serious threat of their routine invocation would greatly disincentivize future use of Bayh-Dole, thereby undermining patent-backed innovation.

Despite this, the president’s July 9 Executive Order on Competition (noted above) instructed the U.S. Commerce Department to defer finalizing a regulation (see here) “that would have ensured that march-in rights under Bayh Dole would not be misused to allow the government to set prices, but utilized for its statutory intent of providing oversight so good faith efforts are being made to turn government-funded innovations into products. But that’s all up in the air now.”

What’s more, a new U.S. Energy Department policy that would more closely scrutinize Bayh-Dole patentees’ licensing transactions and acquisitions (apparently to encourage more domestic manufacturing) has raised questions in the Bayh-Dole community and may discourage licensing transactions (see here and here). Added to this is the fact that “prominent Members of Congress are pressing the Biden Administration to misconstrue the march-in rights clause to control prices of products arising from National Institutes of Health and Department of Defense funding.” All told, therefore, the outlook for continued patent-inspired innovation through Bayh-Dole processes appears to be worse than it has been in many years.

Conclusion

The patent system does far more than provide potential rewards to enhance incentives for particular individuals to invent. The system also creates a means to enhance welfare by facilitating the diffusion of technology through market processes (see here).

But it does even more than that. It actually drives new forms of dynamic competition by inducing third parties to design around new patents, to the benefit of consumers and the overall economy. As revealed by the Bayh-Dole Act, it also has facilitated the more efficient use of federal labs to generate innovation and new products and processes that would not otherwise have seen the light of day. Let us hope that the Biden administration pays heed to these benefits to the American economy and thinks again before taking steps that would further weaken our patent system.     

In Antitrust & Competition, COVID-19, Google, Health Care, Intellectual Property, Monopolization, Patent, Pharmaceuticals, Platforms, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , , ,
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FTC Antitrust Enforcement and the Rule of Law

Alden Abbott —  9 August 2021

The language of the federal antitrust laws is extremely general. Over more than a century, the federal courts have applied common-law techniques to construe this general language to provide guidance to the private sector as to what does or does not run afoul of the law. The interpretive process has been fraught with some uncertainty, as judicial approaches to antitrust analysis have changed several times over the past century. Nevertheless, until very recently, judges and enforcers had converged toward relying on a consumer welfare standard as the touchstone for antitrust evaluations (see my antitrust primer here, for an overview).

While imperfect and subject to potential error in application—a problem of legal interpretation generally—the consumer welfare principle has worked rather well as the focus both for antitrust-enforcement guidance and judicial decision-making. The general stability and predictability of antitrust under a consumer welfare framework has advanced the rule of law. It has given businesses sufficient information to plan transactions in a manner likely to avoid antitrust liability. It thereby has cabined uncertainty and increased the probability that private parties would enter welfare-enhancing commercial arrangements, to the benefit of society.

In a very thoughtful 2017 speech, then Acting Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Andrew Finch commented on the importance of the rule of law to principled antitrust enforcement. He noted:

[H]ow do we administer the antitrust laws more rationally, accurately, expeditiously, and efficiently? … Law enforcement requires stability and continuity both in rules and in their application to specific cases.

Indeed, stability and continuity in enforcement are fundamental to the rule of law. The rule of law is about notice and reliance. When it is impossible to make reasonable predictions about how a law will be applied, or what the legal consequences of conduct will be, these important values are diminished. To call our antitrust regime a “rule of law” regime, we must enforce the law as written and as interpreted by the courts and advance change with careful thought.

The reliance fostered by stability and continuity has obvious economic benefits. Businesses invest, not only in innovation but in facilities, marketing, and personnel, and they do so based on the economic and legal environment they expect to face.

Of course, we want businesses to make those investments—and shape their overall conduct—in accordance with the antitrust laws. But to do so, they need to be able to rely on future application of those laws being largely consistent with their expectations. An antitrust enforcement regime with frequent changes is one that businesses cannot plan for, or one that they will plan for by avoiding certain kinds of investments.

That is certainly not to say there has not been positive change in the antitrust laws in the past, or that we would have been better off without those changes. U.S. antitrust law has been refined, and occasionally recalibrated, with the courts playing their appropriate interpretive role. And enforcers must always be on the watch for new or evolving threats to competition.  As markets evolve and products develop over time, our analysis adapts. But as those changes occur, we pursue reliability and consistency in application in the antitrust laws as much as possible.

Indeed, we have enjoyed remarkable continuity and consensus for many years. Antitrust law in the U.S. has not been a “paradox” for quite some time, but rather a stable and valuable law enforcement regime with appropriately widespread support.

Unfortunately, policy decisions taken by the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) leadership in recent weeks have rejected antitrust continuity and consensus. They have injected substantial uncertainty into the application of competition-law enforcement by the FTC. This abrupt change in emphasis undermines the rule of law and threatens to reduce economic welfare.

As of now, the FTC’s departure from the rule of law has been notable in two areas:

  1. Its rejection of previous guidance on the agency’s “unfair methods of competition” authority, the FTC’s primary non-merger-related enforcement tool; and
  2. Its new advice rejecting time limits for the review of generally routine proposed mergers.

In addition, potential FTC rulemakings directed at “unfair methods of competition” would, if pursued, prove highly problematic.

Rescission of the Unfair Methods of Competition Policy Statement

The FTC on July 1 voted 3-2 to rescind the 2015 FTC Policy Statement Regarding Unfair Methods of Competition under Section 5 of the FTC Act (UMC Policy Statement).

The bipartisan UMC Policy Statement has originally been supported by all three Democratic commissioners, including then-Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. The policy statement generally respected and promoted the rule of law by emphasizing that, in applying the facially broad “unfair methods of competition” (UMC) language, the FTC would be guided by the well-established principles of the antitrust rule of reason (including considering any associated cognizable efficiencies and business justifications) and the consumer welfare standard. The FTC also explained that it would not apply “standalone” Section 5 theories to conduct that would violate the Sherman or Clayton Acts.

In short, the UMC Policy Statement sent a strong signal that the commission would apply UMC in a manner fully consistent with accepted and well-understood antitrust policy principles. As in the past, the vast bulk of FTC Section 5 prosecutions would be brought against conduct that violated the core antitrust laws. Standalone Section 5 cases would be directed solely at those few practices that harmed consumer welfare and competition, but somehow fell into a narrow crack in the basic antitrust statutes (such as, perhaps, “invitations to collude” that lack plausible efficiency justifications). Although the UMC Statement did not answer all questions regarding what specific practices would justify standalone UMC challenges, it substantially limited business uncertainty by bringing Section 5 within the boundaries of settled antitrust doctrine.

The FTC’s announcement of the UMC Policy Statement rescission unhelpfully proclaimed that “the time is right for the Commission to rethink its approach and to recommit to its mandate to police unfair methods of competition even if they are outside the ambit of the Sherman or Clayton Acts.” As a dissenting statement by Commissioner Christine S. Wilson warned, consumers would be harmed by the commission’s decision to prioritize other unnamed interests. And as Commissioner Noah Joshua Phillips stressed in his dissent, the end result would be reduced guidance and greater uncertainty.

In sum, by suddenly leaving private parties in the dark as to how to conform themselves to Section 5’s UMC requirements, the FTC’s rescission offends the rule of law.

New Guidance to Parties Considering Mergers

For decades, parties proposing mergers that are subject to statutory Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act pre-merger notification requirements have operated under the understanding that:

  1. The FTC and U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) will routinely grant “early termination” of review (before the end of the initial 30-day statutory review period) to those transactions posing no plausible competitive threat; and
  2. An enforcement agency’s decision not to request more detailed documents (“second requests”) after an initial 30-day pre-merger review effectively serves as an antitrust “green light” for the proposed acquisition to proceed.

Those understandings, though not statutorily mandated, have significantly reduced antitrust uncertainty and related costs in the planning of routine merger transactions. The rule of law has been advanced through an effective assurance that business combinations that appear presumptively lawful will not be the target of future government legal harassment. This has advanced efficiency in government, as well; it is a cost-beneficial optimal use of resources for DOJ and the FTC to focus exclusively on those proposed mergers that present a substantial potential threat to consumer welfare.

Two recent FTC pronouncements (one in tandem with DOJ), however, have generated great uncertainty by disavowing (at least temporarily) those two welfare-promoting review policies. Joined by DOJ, the FTC on Feb. 4 announced that the agencies would temporarily suspend early terminations, citing an “unprecedented volume of filings” and a transition to new leadership. More than six months later, this “temporary” suspension remains in effect.

Citing “capacity constraints” and a “tidal wave of merger filings,” the FTC subsequently published an Aug. 3 blog post that effectively abrogated the 30-day “green lighting” of mergers not subject to a second request. It announced that it was sending “warning letters” to firms reminding them that FTC investigations remain open after the initial 30-day period, and that “[c]ompanies that choose to proceed with transactions that have not been fully investigated are doing so at their own risk.”

The FTC’s actions interject unwarranted uncertainty into merger planning and undermine the rule of law. Preventing early termination on transactions that have been approved routinely not only imposes additional costs on business; it hints that some transactions might be subject to novel theories of liability that fall outside the antitrust consensus.

Perhaps more significantly, as three prominent antitrust practitioners point out, the FTC’s warning letters states that:

[T]he FTC may challenge deals that “threaten to reduce competition and harm consumers, workers, and honest businesses.” Adding in harm to both “workers and honest businesses” implies that the FTC may be considering more ways that transactions can have an adverse impact other than just harm to competition and consumers [citation omitted].

Because consensus antitrust merger analysis centers on consumer welfare, not the protection of labor or business interests, any suggestion that the FTC may be extending its reach to these new areas is inconsistent with established legal principles and generates new business-planning risks.

More generally, the Aug. 6 FTC “blog post could be viewed as an attempt to modify the temporal framework of the HSR Act”—in effect, an effort to displace an implicit statutory understanding in favor of an agency diktat, contrary to the rule of law. Commissioner Wilson sees the blog post as a means to keep investigations open indefinitely and, thus, an attack on the decades-old HSR framework for handling most merger reviews in an expeditious fashion (see here). Commissioner Phillips is concerned about an attempt to chill legal M&A transactions across the board, particularly unfortunate when there is no reason to conclude that particular transactions are illegal (see here).

Finally, the historical record raises serious questions about the “resource constraint” justification for the FTC’s new merger review policies:

Through the end of July 2021, more than 2,900 transactions were reported to the FTC. It is not clear, however, whether these record-breaking HSR filing numbers have led (or will lead) to more deals being investigated. Historically, only about 13 percent of all deals reported are investigated in some fashion, and roughly 3 percent of all deals reported receive a more thorough, substantive review through the issuance of a Second Request. Even if more deals are being reported, for the majority of transactions, the HSR process is purely administrative, raising no antitrust concerns, and, theoretically, uses few, if any, agency resources. [Citations omitted.]

Proposed FTC Competition Rulemakings

The new FTC leadership is strongly considering competition rulemakings. As I explained in a recent Truth on the Market post, such rulemakings would fail a cost-benefit test. They raise serious legal risks for the commission and could impose wasted resource costs on the FTC and on private parties. More significantly, they would raise two very serious economic policy concerns:

First, competition rules would generate higher error costs than adjudications. Adjudications cabin error costs by allowing for case-specific analysis of likely competitive harms and procompetitive benefits. In contrast, competition rules inherently would be overbroad and would suffer from a very high rate of false positives. By characterizing certain practices as inherently anticompetitive without allowing for consideration of case-specific facts bearing on actual competitive effects, findings of rule violations inevitably would condemn some (perhaps many) efficient arrangements.

Second, competition rules would undermine the rule of law and thereby reduce economic welfare. FTC-only competition rules could lead to disparate legal treatment of a firm’s business practices, depending upon whether the FTC or the U.S. Justice Department was the investigating agency. Also, economic efficiency gains could be lost due to the chilling of aggressive efficiency-seeking business arrangements in those sectors subject to rules. [Emphasis added.]

In short, common law antitrust adjudication, focused on the consumer welfare standard, has done a good job of promoting a vibrant competitive economy in an efficient fashion. FTC competition rulemaking would not.

Conclusion

Recent FTC actions have undermined consensus antitrust-enforcement standards and have departed from established merger-review procedures with respect to seemingly uncontroversial consolidations. Those decisions have imposed costly uncertainty on the business sector and are thereby likely to disincentivize efficiency-seeking arrangements. What’s more, by implicitly rejecting consensus antitrust principles, they denigrate the primacy of the rule of law in antitrust enforcement. The FTC’s pursuit of competition rulemaking would further damage the rule of law by imposing arbitrary strictures that ignore matter-specific considerations bearing on the justifications for particular business decisions.

Fortunately, these are early days in the Biden administration. The problematic initial policy decisions delineated in this comment could be reversed based on further reflection and deliberation within the commission. Chairwoman Lina Khan and her fellow Democratic commissioners would benefit by consulting more closely with Commissioners Wilson and Phillips to reach agreement on substantive and procedural enforcement policies that are better tailored to promote consumer welfare and enhance vibrant competition. Such policies would benefit the U.S. economy in a manner consistent with the rule of law.

In Antitrust & Competition, Antitrust Division, Apple, Error Costs, Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department, Mergers & Acquisitions, Platforms, Section 5, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Congress Should Not Grant the FTC Untrammeled Authority to Obtain Monetary Relief

Alden Abbott —  22 July 2021

The U.S. House this week passed H.R. 2668, the Consumer Protection and Recovery Act (CPRA), which authorizes the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to seek monetary relief in federal courts for injunctions brought under Section 13(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act.

Potential relief under the CPRA is comprehensive. It includes “restitution for losses, rescission or reformation of contracts, refund of money, return of property … and disgorgement of any unjust enrichment that a person, partnership, or corporation obtained as a result of the violation that gives rise to the suit.” What’s more, under the CPRA, monetary relief may be obtained for violations that occurred up to 10 years before the filing of the suit in which relief is requested by the FTC.

The Senate should reject the House version of the CPRA. Its monetary-recovery provisions require substantial narrowing if it is to pass cost-benefit muster.

The CPRA is a response to the Supreme Court’s April 22 decision in AMG Capital Management v. FTC, which held that Section 13(b) of the FTC Act does not authorize the commission to obtain court-ordered equitable monetary relief. As I explained in an April 22 Truth on the Market post, Congress’ response to the court’s holding should not be to grant the FTC carte blanche authority to obtain broad monetary exactions for any and all FTC Act violations. I argued that “[i]f Congress adopts a cost-beneficial error-cost framework in shaping targeted legislation, it should limit FTC monetary relief authority (recoupment and disgorgement) to situations of consumer fraud or dishonesty arising under the FTC’s authority to pursue unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”

Error cost and difficulties of calculation counsel against pursuing monetary recovery in FTC unfair methods of competition cases. As I explained in my post:

Consumer redress actions are problematic for a large proportion of FTC antitrust enforcement (“unfair methods of competition”) initiatives. Many of these antitrust cases are “cutting edge” matters involving novel theories and complex fact patterns that pose a significant threat of type I [false positives] error. (In comparison, type I error is low in hardcore collusion cases brought by the U.S. Justice Department where the existence, nature, and effects of cartel activity are plain). What’s more, they generally raise extremely difficult if not impossible problems in estimating the degree of consumer harm. (Even DOJ price-fixing cases raise non-trivial measurement difficulties.)

These error-cost and calculation difficulties became even more pronounced as of July 1. On that date, the FTC unwisely voted 3-2 to withdraw a bipartisan 2015 policy statement providing that the commission would apply consumer welfare and rule-of-reason (weighing efficiencies against anticompetitive harm) considerations in exercising its unfair methods of competition authority (see my commentary here). This means that, going forward, the FTC will arrogate to itself unbounded discretion to decide what competitive practices are “unfair.” Business uncertainty, and the costly risk aversion it engenders, would be expected to grow enormously if the FTC could extract monies from firms due to competitive behavior deemed “unfair,” based on no discernible neutral principle.

Error costs and calculation problems also strongly suggest that monetary relief in FTC consumer-protection matters should be limited to cases of fraud or clear deception. As I noted:

[M]atters involving a higher likelihood of error and severe measurement problems should be the weakest candidates for consumer redress in the consumer protection sphere. For example, cases involve allegedly misleading advertising regarding the nature of goods, or allegedly insufficient advertising substantiation, may generate high false positives and intractable difficulties in estimating consumer harm. As a matter of judgment, given resource constraints, seeking financial recoveries solely in cases of fraud or clear deception where consumer losses are apparent and readily measurable makes the most sense from a cost-benefit perspective.

In short, the Senate should rewrite its Section 13(b) amendments to authorize FTC monetary recoveries only when consumer fraud and dishonesty is shown.

Finally, the Senate would be wise to sharply pare back the House language that allows the FTC to seek monetary exactions based on conduct that is a decade old. Serious problems of making accurate factual determinations of economic effects and specific-damage calculations would arise after such a long period of time. Allowing retroactive determinations based on a shorter “look-back” period prior to the filing of a complaint (three years, perhaps) would appear to strike a better balance in allowing reasonable redress while controlling error costs.

In Antitrust & Competition, Error Costs, Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , , ,
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A First Glance at the Biden Executive Order on Competition: The Good and the Bad (Including Much that Looks Ugly)

Alden Abbott —  9 July 2021

The Biden Administration’s July 9 Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy is very much a mixed bag—some positive aspects, but many negative ones.

It will have some positive effects on economic welfare, to the extent it succeeds in lifting artificial barriers to competition that harm consumers and workers—such as allowing direct sales of hearing aids in drug stores—and helping to eliminate unnecessary occupational licensing restrictions, to name just two of several examples.

But it will likely have substantial negative effects on economic welfare as well. Many aspects of the order appear to emphasize new regulation—such as Net Neutrality requirements that may reduce investment in broadband by internet service providers—and imposing new regulatory requirements on airlines, pharmaceutical companies, digital platforms, banks, railways, shipping, and meat packers, among others. Arbitrarily imposing new rules in these areas, without a cost-beneficial appraisal and a showing of a market failure, threatens to reduce innovation and slow economic growth, hurting producers and consumer. (A careful review of specific regulatory proposals may shed greater light on the justifications for particular regulations.)

Antitrust-related proposals to challenge previously cleared mergers, and to impose new antitrust rulemaking, are likely to raise costly business uncertainty, to the detriment of businesses and consumers. They are a recipe for slower economic growth, not for vibrant competition.

An underlying problem with the order is that it is based on the false premise that competition has diminished significantly in recent decades and that “big is bad.” Economic analysis found in the February 2020 Economic Report of the President, and in other economic studies, debunks this flawed assumption.

In short, the order commits the fundamental mistake of proposing intrusive regulatory solutions for a largely nonexistent problem. Competitive issues are best handled through traditional well-accepted antitrust analysis, which centers on promoting consumer welfare and on weighing procompetitive efficiencies against anticompetitive harm on a case-by-case basis. This approach:

  1. Deals effectively with serious competitive problems; while at the same time
  2. Cabining error costs by taking into account all economically relevant considerations on a case-specific basis.

Rather than using an executive order to direct very specific regulatory approaches without a strong economic and factual basis, the Biden administration would have been better served by raising a host of competitive issues that merit possible study and investigation by expert agencies. Such an approach would have avoided imposing the costs of unwarranted regulation that unfortunately are likely to stem from the new order.

Finally, the order’s call for new regulations and the elimination of various existing legal policies will spawn matter-specific legal challenges, and may, in many cases, not succeed in court. This will impose unnecessary business uncertainty in addition to public and private resources wasted on litigation.

In Administrative Law, Antitrust & Competition, Antitrust Division, Banking, Broadband, Data Privacy & Security, Error Costs, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Financial Regulation, Health Care, Intellectual Property, Justice Department, Merger Guidelines, Mergers & Acquisitions, Monopolization, Net Neutrality, Pharmaceuticals, Platforms, Regulation, Telecommunications, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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FTC Competition Rulemaking Flunks a Cost-Benefit Test

Alden Abbott —  29 June 2021

There is little doubt that Federal Trade Commission (FTC) unfair methods of competition rulemaking proceedings are in the offing. Newly named FTC Chair Lina Khan and Commissioner Rohit Chopra both have extolled the benefits of competition rulemaking in a major law review article. What’s more, in May, Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter (during her stint as acting chair) established a rulemaking unit in the commission’s Office of General Counsel empowered to “explore new rulemakings to prohibit unfair or deceptive practices and unfair methods of competition” (emphasis added).

In short, a majority of sitting FTC commissioners apparently endorse competition rulemaking proceedings. As such, it is timely to ask whether FTC competition rules would promote consumer welfare, the paramount goal of competition policy.

In a recently published Mercatus Center research paper, I assess the case for competition rulemaking from a competition perspective and find it wanting. I conclude that, before proceeding, the FTC should carefully consider whether such rulemakings would be cost-beneficial. I explain that any cost-benefit appraisal should weigh both the legal risks and the potential economic policy concerns (error costs and “rule of law” harms). Based on these considerations, competition rulemaking is inappropriate. The FTC should stick with antitrust enforcement as its primary tool for strengthening the competitive process and thereby promoting consumer welfare.

A summary of my paper follows.

Section 6(g) of the original Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes the FTC “to make rules and regulations for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of this subchapter.” Section 6(g) rules are enacted pursuant to the “informal rulemaking” requirements of Section 553 of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), which apply to the vast majority of federal agency rulemaking proceedings.

Before launching Section 6(g) competition rulemakings, however, the FTC would be well-advised first to weigh the legal risks and policy concerns associated with such an endeavor. Rulemakings are resource-intensive proceedings and should not lightly be undertaken without an eye to their feasibility and implications for FTC enforcement policy.

Only one appeals court decision addresses the scope of Section 6(g) rulemaking. In 1971, the FTC enacted a Section 6(g) rule stating that it was both an “unfair method of competition” and an “unfair act or practice” for refiners or others who sell to gasoline retailers “to fail to disclose clearly and conspicuously in a permanent manner on the pumps the minimum octane number or numbers of the motor gasoline being dispensed.” In 1973, in the National Petroleum Refiners case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the FTC’s authority to promulgate this and other binding substantive rules. The court rejected the argument that Section 6(g) authorized only non-substantive regulations concerning regarding the FTC’s non-adjudicatory, investigative, and informative functions, spelled out elsewhere in Section 6.

In 1975, two years after National Petroleum Refiners was decided, Congress granted the FTC specific consumer-protection rulemaking authority (authorizing enactment of trade regulation rules dealing with unfair or deceptive acts or practices) through Section 202 of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which added Section 18 to the FTC Act. Magnuson-Moss rulemakings impose adjudicatory-type hearings and other specific requirements on the FTC, unlike more flexible section 6(g) APA informal rulemakings. However, the FTC can obtain civil penalties for violation of Magnuson-Moss rules, something it cannot do if 6(g) rules are violated.

In a recent set of public comments filed with the FTC, the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association stated:

[T]he Commission’s [6(g)] rulemaking authority is buried in within an enumerated list of investigative powers, such as the power to require reports from corporations and partnerships, for example. Furthermore, the [FTC] Act fails to provide any sanctions for violating any rule adopted pursuant to Section 6(g). These two features strongly suggest that Congress did not intend to give the agency substantive rulemaking powers when it passed the Federal Trade Commission Act.

Rephrased, this argument suggests that the structure of the FTC Act indicates that the rulemaking referenced in Section 6(g) is best understood as an aid to FTC processes and investigations, not a source of substantive policymaking. Although the National Petroleum Refiners decision rejected such a reading, that ruling came at a time of significant judicial deference to federal agency activism, and may be dated.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s April 2021 decision in AMG Capital Management v. FTC further bolsters the “statutory structure” argument that Section 6(g) does not authorize substantive rulemaking. In AMG, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that Section 13(b) of the FTC Act, which empowers the FTC to seek a “permanent injunction” to restrain an FTC Act violation, does not authorize the FTC to seek monetary relief from wrongdoers. The court’s opinion rejected the FTC’s argument that the term “permanent injunction” had historically been understood to include monetary relief. The court explained that the injunctive language was “buried” in a lengthy provision that focuses on injunctive, not monetary relief (note that the term “rules” is similarly “buried” within 6(g) language dealing with unrelated issues). The court also pointed to the structure of the FTC Act, with detailed and specific monetary-relief provisions found in Sections 5(l) and 19, as “confirm[ing] the conclusion” that Section 13(b) does not grant monetary relief.

By analogy, a court could point to Congress’ detailed enumeration of substantive rulemaking provisions in Section 18 (a mere two years after National Petroleum Refiners) as cutting against the claim that Section 6(g) can also be invoked to support substantive rulemaking. Finally, the Supreme Court in AMG flatly rejected several relatively recent appeals court decisions that upheld Section 13(b) monetary-relief authority. It follows that the FTC cannot confidently rely on judicial precedent (stemming from one arguably dated court decision, National Petroleum Refiners) to uphold its competition rulemaking authority.

In sum, the FTC will have to overcome serious fundamental legal challenges to its section 6(g) competition rulemaking authority if it seeks to promulgate competition rules.

Even if the FTC’s 6(g) authority is upheld, it faces three other types of litigation-related risks.

First, applying the nondelegation doctrine, courts might hold that the broad term “unfair methods of competition” does not provide the FTC “an intelligible principle” to guide the FTC’s exercise of discretion in rulemaking. Such a judicial holding would mean the FTC could not issue competition rules.

Second, a reviewing court might strike down individual proposed rules as “arbitrary and capricious” if, say, the court found that the FTC rulemaking record did not sufficiently take into account potentially procompetitive manifestations of a condemned practice.

Third, even if a final competition rule passes initial legal muster, applying its terms to individual businesses charged with rule violations may prove difficult. Individual businesses may seek to structure their conduct to evade the particular strictures of a rule, and changes in commercial practices may render less common the specific acts targeted by a rule’s language.

Economic Policy Concerns Raised by Competition Rulemaking

In addition to legal risks, any cost-benefit appraisal of FTC competition rulemaking should consider the economic policy concerns raised by competition rulemaking. These fall into two broad categories.

First, competition rules would generate higher error costs than adjudications. Adjudications cabin error costs by allowing for case-specific analysis of likely competitive harms and procompetitive benefits. In contrast, competition rules inherently would be overbroad and would suffer from a very high rate of false positives. By characterizing certain practices as inherently anticompetitive without allowing for consideration of case-specific facts bearing on actual competitive effects, findings of rule violations inevitably would condemn some (perhaps many) efficient arrangements.

Second, competition rules would undermine the rule of law and thereby reduce economic welfare. FTC-only competition rules could lead to disparate legal treatment of a firm’s business practices, depending upon whether the FTC or the U.S. Justice Department was the investigating agency. Also, economic efficiency gains could be lost due to the chilling of aggressive efficiency-seeking business arrangements in those sectors subject to rules.

Conclusion

A combination of legal risks and economic policy harms strongly counsels against the FTC’s promulgation of substantive competition rules.

First, litigation issues would consume FTC resources and add to the costly delays inherent in developing competition rules in the first place. The compounding of separate serious litigation risks suggests a significant probability that costs would be incurred in support of rules that ultimately would fail to be applied.

Second, even assuming competition rules were to be upheld, their application would raise serious economic policy questions. The inherent inflexibility of rule-based norms is ill-suited to deal with dynamic evolving market conditions, compared with matter-specific antitrust litigation that flexibly applies the latest economic thinking to particular circumstances. New competition rules would also exacerbate costly policy inconsistencies stemming from the existence of dual federal antitrust enforcement agencies, the FTC and the Justice Department.

In conclusion, an evaluation of rule-related legal risks and economic policy concerns demonstrates that a reallocation of some FTC enforcement resources to the development of competition rules would not be cost-effective. Continued sole reliance on case-by-case antitrust litigation would generate greater economic welfare than a mixture of litigation and competition rules.

In Administrative Law, Antitrust & Competition, Antitrust Division, Corporate & Securities Law, Error Costs, Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department, Section 5, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Dynamic Merger Efficiencies: The Case of Pharmaceutical Markets

Alden Abbott —  25 June 2021

The recent launch of the international Multilateral Pharmaceutical Merger Task Force (MPMTF) is just the latest example of burgeoning cooperative efforts by leading competition agencies to promote convergence in antitrust enforcement. (See my recent paper on the globalization of antitrust, which assesses multinational cooperation and convergence initiatives in greater detail.) In what is a first, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the U.S. Justice Department’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division, offices of state Attorneys General, the European Commission’s Competition Directorate, Canada’s Competition Bureau, and the U.K.’s Competition and Market Authority (CMA) jointly created the MPMTF in March 2021 “to update their approach to analyzing the effects of pharmaceutical mergers.”

To help inform its analysis, in May 2021 the MPMTF requested public comments concerning the effects of pharmaceutical mergers. The MPMTF sought submissions regarding (among other issues) seven sets of questions:   

  1. What theories of harm should enforcement agencies consider when evaluating pharmaceutical mergers, including theories of harm beyond those currently considered?
  2. What is the full range of a pharmaceutical merger’s effects on innovation? What challenges arise when mergers involve proprietary drug discovery and manufacturing platforms?
  3. In pharmaceutical merger review, how should we consider the risks or effects of conduct such as price-setting practices, reverse payments, and other ways in which pharmaceutical companies respond to or rely on regulatory processes?
  4. How should we approach market definition in pharmaceutical mergers, and how is that implicated by new or evolving theories of harm?
  5. What evidence may be relevant or necessary to assess and, if applicable, challenge a pharmaceutical merger based on any new or expanded theories of harm?
  6. What types of remedies would work in the cases to which those theories are applied?
  7. What factors, such as the scope of assets and characteristics of divestiture buyers, influence the likelihood and success of pharmaceutical divestitures to resolve competitive concerns?

My research assistant Andrew Mercado and I recently submitted comments for the record addressing the questions posed by the MPMTF. We concluded:

Federal merger enforcement in general and FTC pharmaceutical merger enforcement in particular have been effective in promoting competition and consumer welfare. Proposed statutory amendments to strengthen merger enforcement not only are unnecessary, but also would, if enacted, tend to undermine welfare and would thus be poor public policy. A brief analysis of seven questions propounded by the Multilateral Pharmaceutical Merger Task Force suggests that: (a) significant changes in enforcement policies are not warranted; and (b) investigators should employ sound law and economics analysis, taking full account of merger-related efficiencies, when evaluating pharmaceutical mergers. 

While we leave it to interested readers to review our specific comments, this commentary highlights one key issue which we stressed—the importance of giving due weight to efficiencies (and, in particular, dynamic efficiencies) in evaluating pharma mergers. We also note an important critique by FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson of the treatment accorded merger-related efficiencies by U.S. antitrust enforcers.   

Discussion

Innovation in pharmaceuticals and vaccines has immensely significant economic and social consequences, as demonstrated most recently in the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, it is particularly important that public policy not stand in the way of realizing efficiencies that promote innovation in these markets. This observation applies directly, of course, to pharmaceutical antitrust enforcement, in general, and to pharma merger enforcement, in particular.

Regrettably, however, though general merger-enforcement policy has been generally sound, it has somewhat undervalued merger-related efficiencies.

Although U.S. antitrust enforcers give lip service to their serious consideration of efficiencies in merger reviews, the reality appears to be quite different, as documented by Commissioner Wilson in a 2020 speech.

Wilson’s General Merger-Efficiencies Critique: According to Wilson, the combination of finding narrow markets and refusing to weigh out-of-market efficiencies has created major “legal and evidentiary hurdles a defendant must clear when seeking to prove offsetting procompetitive efficiencies.” What’s more, the “courts [have] largely continue[d] to follow the Agencies’ lead in minimizing the importance of efficiencies.” Wilson shows that “the Horizontal Merger Guidelines text and case law appear to set different standards for demonstrating harms and efficiencies,” and argues that this “asymmetric approach has the obvious potential consequence of preventing some procompetitive mergers that increase consumer welfare.” Wilson concludes on a more positive note that this problem can be addressed by having enforcers: (1) treat harms and efficiencies symmetrically; and (2) establish clear and reasonable expectations for what types of efficiency analysis will and will not pass muster.

While our filing with the MPMTF did not discuss Wilson’s general treatment of merger efficiencies, one would hope that the task force will appropriately weigh it in its deliberations. Our filing instead briefly addressed two “informational efficiencies” that may arise in the context of pharmaceutical mergers. These include:

More Efficient Resource Reallocation: The theory of the firm teaches that mergers may be motivated by the underutilization or misallocation of assets, or the opportunity to create welfare-enhancing synergies. In the pharmaceutical industry, these synergies may come from joining complementary research and development programs, combining diverse and specialized expertise that may be leveraged for better, faster drug development and more innovation.

Enhanced R&D: Currently, much of the R&D for large pharmaceutical companies is achieved through partnerships or investment in small biotechnology and research firms specializing in a single type of therapy. Whereas large pharmaceutical companies have expertise in marketing, navigating regulation, and undertaking trials of new drugs, small, research-focused firms can achieve greater advancements in medicine with smaller budgets. Furthermore, changes within firms brought about by a merger may increase innovation.

With increases in intellectual property and proprietary data that come from the merging of two companies, smaller research firms that work with the merged entity may have access to greater pools of information, enhancing the potential for innovation without increasing spending. This change not only raises the efficiency of the research being conducted in these small firms, but also increases the probability of a breakthrough without an increase in risk.

Conclusion

U.S. pharmaceutical merger enforcement has been fairly effective in forestalling anticompetitive combinations while allowing consumer welfare-enhancing transactions to go forward. Policy in this area should remain generally the same. Enforcers should continue to base enforcement decisions on sound economic theory fully supported by case-specific facts. Enforcement agencies could benefit, however, by placing a greater emphasis on efficiencies analysis. In particular, they should treat harms and efficiencies symmetrically (as recommend by Commissioner Wilson), and fully take into account likely resource reallocation and innovation-related efficiencies. 

In Antitrust & Competition, Antitrust Division, Corporate & Securities Law, COVID-19, Economic Theory, European Union, Federal Trade Commission, Health Care, Intellectual Property, International, Justice Department, Market Definition, Merger Guidelines, Mergers & Acquisitions, Pharmaceuticals, Platforms, Truth on the Market, United Kingdom , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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