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Speaking at events next week on privacy/data security and merger enforcement

Geoffrey Manne —  31 May 2017 — Leave a comment

I’ll be participating in two excellent antitrust/consumer protection events next week in DC, both of which may be of interest to our readers:

5th Annual Public Policy Conference on the Law & Economics of Privacy and Data Security

hosted by the GMU Law & Economics Center’s Program on Economics & Privacy, in partnership with the Future of Privacy Forum, and the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy.

Conference Description:

Data flows are central to an increasingly large share of the economy. A wide array of products and business models—from the sharing economy and artificial intelligence to autonomous vehicles and embedded medical devices—rely on personal data. Consequently, privacy regulation leaves a large economic footprint. As with any regulatory enterprise, the key to sound data policy is striking a balance between competing interests and norms that leaves consumers better off; finding an approach that addresses privacy concerns, but also supports the benefits of technology is an increasingly complex challenge. Not only is technology continuously advancing, but individual attitudes, expectations, and participation vary greatly. New ideas and approaches to privacy must be identified and developed at the same pace and with the same focus as the technologies they address.

This year’s symposium will include panels on Unfairness under Section 5: Unpacking “Substantial Injury”, Conceptualizing the Benefits and Costs from Data Flows, and The Law and Economics of Data Security.

I will be presenting a draft paper, co-authored with Kristian Stout, on the FTC’s reasonableness standard in data security cases following the Commission decision in LabMD, entitled, When “Reasonable” Isn’t: The FTC’s Standard-less Data Security Standard.

Conference Details:

  • Thursday, June 8, 2017
  • 8:00 am to 3:40 pm
  • at George Mason University, Founders Hall (next door to the Law School)
    • 3351 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22201

Register here

View the full agenda here

 

The State of Antitrust Enforcement

hosted by the Federalist Society.

Panel Description:

Antitrust policy during much of the Obama Administration was a continuation of the Bush Administration’s minimal involvement in the market. However, at the end of President Obama’s term, there was a significant pivot to investigations and blocks of high profile mergers such as Halliburton-Baker Hughes, Comcast-Time Warner Cable, Staples-Office Depot, Sysco-US Foods, and Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna. How will or should the new Administration analyze proposed mergers, including certain high profile deals like Walgreens-Rite Aid, AT&T-Time Warner, Inc., and DraftKings-FanDuel?

Join us for a lively luncheon panel discussion that will cover these topics and the anticipated future of antitrust enforcement.

Speakers:

  • Albert A. Foer, Founder and Senior Fellow, American Antitrust Institute
  • Profesor Geoffrey A. Manne, Executive Director, International Center for Law & Economics
  • Honorable Joshua D. Wright, Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law
  • Moderator: Honorable Ronald A. Cass, Dean Emeritus, Boston University School of Law and President, Cass & Associates, PC

Panel Details:

  • Friday, June 09, 2017
  • 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm
  • at the National Press Club, MWL Conference Rooms
    • 529 14th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20045

Register here

Hope to see everyone at both events!

In administrative, announcements, antitrust, consumer protection, data security, federal trade commission, ftc, george mason university school of law, international center for law & economics, law and economics, mergers & acquisitions, scholarship , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Why the Federal Trade Commission (not the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) Should Oversee Consumer Protection in Financial Markets

Alden Abbott —  8 March 2017

On February 28, the Heritage Foundation released Prosperity Unleashed:  Smarter Financial Regulation, a Report that lays bare the heavy and unnecessary burdens imposed on our economy by defective financial regulations, and proposed market-oriented regulatory reforms that would benefit American producers, consumers, and the overall economy.  In a recent Truth on the Market blog commentary, I summarized the key findings and recommendations set forth in the Report’s 23 chapters.  In this commentary, I explore in greater detail chapter 19 of the Report, “How Congress Should Protect Consumers’ Finances,” co-authored by George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law Todd J. Zywicki and me.

Chapter 19 makes the case for legislative reform that would eliminate the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s oversight of consumer protection in financial markets and transfer such authority to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (key excerpts with footnote references omitted follow):

Free-market competition is key to the efficient provision of the goods and services that consumers desire. More generally, the free market promotes innovation and overall economic welfare. Imperfect information can, however, limit the ability of competition to be effective in benefiting consumers and the economy. In particular, inaccurate information about the quality and attributes of market offerings may lead consumers to make mistaken purchase decisions—in other words, consumers may not get what they think they bargained for. This will lead to the distrust of market processes, as sellers find it harder to differentiate themselves from their competition. The end result is less-effective competition, less consumer satisfaction, and lower economic welfare.

Fraudulent or deceptive statements regarding product or service attributes, and negative features of products or services that become evident only after sale, are prime examples of inaccurate information that undermines trust in competitive firms. Accordingly, the government has a legitimate role in seeking to curb fraud, deception, and related informational problems. Historically, the federal government’s primary consumer protection agency, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), has taken the lead in bringing enforcement actions against businesses that distort markets by engaging in “deceptive” or “unfair” practices when marketing their offerings to consumers. In recent decades, the FTC has taken an economics-focused approach in these areas. Specifically, it has limited “deception prosecutions” to cases where consumers acting reasonably were misled and tangibly harmed, and “unfairness prosecutions” to situations involving consumer injury not outweighed by countervailing benefits (a cost-benefit approach). In other words, although the FTC may have erred from time to time in specific cases, its general approach has avoided government overreach and has been conducive to enhancing marketplace efficiency and consumer welfare.

However, Congress has not allowed the FTC to exercise economy-wide oversight over consumer protection, in general, and fraud and deception, in particular. For many years, a hodgepodge of different federal financial service regulators were empowered to regulate the practices of a wide variety of financial industry entities, with the FTC only empowered to oversee consumer financial protection with respect to the narrow category of “non-bank financial institutions.” As part of the 2010 Dodd–Frank financial reform legislation, Congress created a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), loosely tied to the Federal Reserve Board. While Dodd–Frank mandated shared CFPB–FTC consumer protection jurisdiction over non-bank financial institutions, it transferred all other authority over the many separate consumer financial protection laws to the CFPB alone. The CFPB is simultaneously one of the most powerful and least-accountable regulatory bodies in United States history. In marked contrast to the FTC’s economics-based approach, the CFPB intervenes in financial market consumer-related practices in a heavy-handed arbitrary fashion that ignores sound economics. The upshot is that far from improving market efficiency, the CFPB reduces market efficiency, to the detriment of consumers, producers, and the overall economy. In short, the CFPB’s actions are a prime example of government failure.

The substantive powers of the CFPB are vast and ill-defined. The CFPB has power to regulate the terms and marketing of every consumer credit product in the economy. And, because many small businesses use personal credit to start and grow their businesses (such as personal credit cards, home equity lines of credit, and even products like auto title loans), the CFPB possesses substantial control over much of the allocation of small-business credit as well. The CFPB has the power to take enforcement and regulatory action against “unfair, deceptive, and abusive” consumer credit terms, an authority that the CFPB has exercised with gusto. Moreover, the CFPB has deliberately eschewed regulatory rule-making that would clarify these terms, preferring to engage in case-by-case enforcement actions that undermine predictability and chill vigorous competition and innovation. Yet despite the broad authority granted to the CFPB, its appetite is broader still: The CFPB has taken action to regulate products such as cellphone billing, for-profit career colleges, and even loans made by auto dealers (despite express jurisdictional limits in Dodd–Frank regarding the latter).

The consequences of this unchecked authority have been disastrous for consumers and the economy. Complicated rules with high compliance costs have choked off access to mortgages, credit cards, and other financial products. Overwhelmed by the costs and uncertainty of regulatory compliance, small banks have exited traditional lines of business, such as home mortgages, and feared entering new lines, such as small-dollar loans. Consistent with the general effects of Dodd–Frank, the CFPB has contributed to the consolidation of the American financial sector, making big banks bigger, and forcing consolidation of small banks. By imposing one-size-fits-all bureaucratic underwriting standards on community banks and credit unions, the CFPB has deprived these actors of their traditional model of relationship lending and intimate knowledge of their customers—their lone competitive advantage over megabanks.

Perhaps the most tragic element of the CFPB train wreck is the missed opportunity for reform that it represents. At the time of Dodd–Frank, the system of consumer financial protection was badly in need of modernization: The existing system was cumbersome, incoherent, and ineffective. Fragmented among multiple federal agencies with authority over different providers of financial services, the federal system lacked the ability to lay down a coherent regulatory regime that would promote competition, consumer choice, and consumer protection consistent with the realities of a 21st-century economy and technology. While there is little evidence that the financial crisis resulted from a breakdown of consumer financial protection (as opposed to safety and soundness issues), reform was timely. But Dodd–Frank squandered a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring about real reform.

In this chapter, we briefly make the case that some degree of reform of the consumer financial protection system was appropriate, in particular, the consolidation of consumer financial protection in one federal agency. However, we challenge the apparatus constructed by Dodd–Frank that created a new unaccountable super-regulator with a tunnel vision focus on a narrow definition of “consumer protection.” Instead, we argue that existing substantive powers were largely sufficient to the task of consumer protection, and that Congress could have achieved better results by acting within the existing institutional framework by simply consolidating authority in the FTC. By working within the existing framework of long-standing substantive authorities and institutional arrangements, Congress could have provided the needed modernization of the federal consumer financial protection system without the unintended consequences that have resulted from the creation of the CFPB. . . .

Consolidating the powers granted to the CFPB in the FTC, which still retains certain regulatory responsibilities with respect to consumer finance, would have a number of advantages over the course chosen in Dodd–Frank.

First, the FTC is a multimember, bipartisan commission. This is an important improvement over the structure of the CFPB, which [is led by a single unaccountable director and] is neither an independent commission nor an executive agency. . . . 

[Second,] [t]he FTC [,unlike the CFPB,] is . . . subject to Congress’s appropriations process, an important check on the agency’s actions. . . .

Finally, the FTC has a large Bureau of Economics, staffed with academically trained economists who would be ideally suited to take into account the regulatory economic policy issues, discussed herein, to which the CFPB has paid no heed. This would make it far more likely that agency regulatory decisions affecting consumer credit markets would be taken in light of the effects of agency actions on consumer welfare and the broader economy. . . .

[In conclusion,] [e]liminating the CFPB’s authority over consumer protection in financial services, and transferring such authority to the FTC, would greatly improve the current sorry state of affairs. Admittedly, the FTC is a less-than-perfect agency, and even a multimember-commission structure does not prevent institutional mistakes from being made and repeated by the majority. All in all, however, as an accountable institution, the FTC is far superior to the CFPB. Consolidating this authority with the FTC—where it should have been in the first place—will better allow free markets to promote innovation and overall economic welfare. Strengthening this legal framework to provide a single, clearly defined, properly limited set of rules will facilitate competition among financial firms, thus protecting consumers and providing them with better choices.

In federal trade commission, financial regulation , , ,
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Commissioner Ohlhausen’s Qualcomm Dissent Points the Way Toward Sound Antitrust Enforcement

Alden Abbott —  18 January 2017

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) regrettable January 17 filing of a federal court injunctive action against Qualcomm, in the waning days of the Obama Administration, is a blow to its institutional integrity and well-earned reputation as a top notch competition agency.

Stripping away the semantic gloss, the heart of the FTC’s complaint is that Qualcomm is charging smartphone makers “too much” for licenses needed to practice standardized cellular communications technologies – technologies that Qualcomm developed. This complaint flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s teaching in Verizon v. Trinko that a monopolist has every right to charge monopoly prices and thereby enjoy the full fruits of its legitimately obtained monopoly. But Qualcomm is more than one exceptionally ill-advised example of prosecutorial overreach, that (hopefully) will fail and end up on the scrapheap of unsound federal antitrust initiatives. The Qualcomm complaint undoubtedly will be cited by aggressive foreign competition authorities as showing that American antitrust enforcement now recognizes mere “excessive pricing” as a form of “monopoly abuse” – therefore justifying “excessive pricing” cases that are growing like topsy abroad, especially in East Asia.

Particularly unfortunate is the fact that the Commission chose to authorize the filing by a 2-1 vote, which ignored Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen’s pithy dissent – a rarity in cases involving the filing of federal lawsuits. Commissioner Ohlhausen’s analysis skewers the legal and economic basis for the FTC’s complaint, and her summary, which includes an outstanding statement of basic antitrust enforcement principles, is well worth noting (footnote omitted):

My practice is not to write dissenting statements when the Commission, against my vote, authorizes litigation. That policy reflects several principles. It preserves the integrity of the agency’s mission, recognizes that reasonable minds can differ, and supports the FTC’s staff, who litigate demanding cases for consumers’ benefit. On the rare occasion when I do write, it has been to avoid implying that I disagree with the complaint’s theory of liability.

I do not depart from that policy lightly. Yet, in the Commission’s 2-1 decision to sue Qualcomm, I face an extraordinary situation: an enforcement action based on a flawed legal theory (including a standalone Section 5 count) that lacks economic and evidentiary support, that was brought on the eve of a new presidential administration, and that, by its mere issuance, will undermine U.S. intellectual property rights in Asia and worldwide. These extreme circumstances compel me to voice my objections.

Let us hope that President Trump makes it an early and high priority to name Commissioner Ohlhausen Acting Chairman of the FTC. The FTC simply cannot afford any more embarrassing and ill-reasoned antitrust initiatives that undermine basic principles of American antitrust enforcement and may be used by foreign competition authorities to justify unwarranted actions against American firms. Maureen Ohlhausen can be counted upon to provide needed leadership in moving the Commission in a sounder direction.

P.S. I have previously published a commentary at this site regarding an unwarranted competition law Statement of Objections directed at Google by the European Commission, a matter which did not involve patent licensing. And for a more general critique of European competition policy along these lines, see here.

In error costs, federal trade commission, intellectual property, international, technology, truth on the market , ,
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Competition Policy for a New Administration

Alden Abbott —  23 November 2016

As Truth on the Market readers prepare to enjoy their Thanksgiving dinners, let me offer some (hopefully palatable) “food for thought” on a competition policy for the new Trump Administration.  In referring to competition policy, I refer not just to lawsuits directed against private anticompetitive conduct, but more broadly to efforts aimed at curbing government regulatory barriers that undermine the competitive process.

Public regulatory barriers are a huge problem.  Their costs have been highlighted by prestigious international research bodies such as the OECD and World Bank, and considered by the International Competition Network’s Advocacy Working Group.  Government-imposed restrictions on competition benefit powerful incumbents and stymie entry by innovative new competitors.  (One manifestation of this that is particularly harmful for American workers and denies job opportunities to millions of lower-income Americans is occupational licensing, whose increasing burdens are delineated in a substantial body of research – see, for example, a 2015 Obama Administration White House Report and a 2016 Heritage Foundation Commentary that explore the topic.)  Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Justice Department (DOJ) antitrust officials should consider emphasizing “state action” lawsuits aimed at displacing entry barriers and other unwarranted competitive burdens imposed by self-interested state regulatory boards.  When the legal prerequisites for such enforcement actions are not met, the FTC and the DOJ should ramp up their “competition advocacy” efforts, with the aim of convincing state regulators to avoid adopting new restraints on competition – and, where feasible, eliminating or curbing existing restraints.

The FTC and DOJ also should be authorized by the White House to pursue advocacy initiatives whose goal is to dismantle or lessen the burden of excessive federal regulations (such advocacy played a role in furthering federal regulatory reform during the Ford and Carter Administrations).  To bolster those initiatives, the Trump Administration should consider establishing a high-level federal task force on procompetitive regulatory reform, in the spirit of previous reform initiatives.  The task force would report to the president and include senior level representatives from all federal agencies with regulatory responsibilities.  The task force could examine all major regulatory and statutory schemes overseen by Executive Branch and independent agencies, and develop a list of specific reforms designed to reduce federal regulatory impediments to robust competition.  Those reforms could be implemented through specific regulatory changes or legislative proposals, as the case might require.  The task force would have ample material to work with – for example, anticompetitive cartel-like output restrictions, such as those allowed under federal agricultural orders, are especially pernicious.  In addition to specific cartel-like programs, scores of regulatory regimes administered by individual federal agencies impose huge costs and merit particular attention, as documented in the Heritage Foundation’s annual “Red Tape Rising” reports that document the growing burden of federal regulation (see, for example, the 2016 edition of Red Tape Rising).

With respect to traditional antitrust enforcement, the Trump Administration should emphasize sound, empirically-based economic analysis in merger and non-merger enforcement.  They should also adopt a “decision-theoretic” approach to enforcement, to the greatest extent feasible.  Specifically, in developing their enforcement priorities, in considering case selection criteria, and in assessing possible new (or amended) antitrust guidelines, DOJ and FTC antitrust enforcers should recall that antitrust is, like all administrative systems, inevitably subject to error costs.  Accordingly, Trump Administration enforcers should be mindful of the outstanding insights provide by Judge (and Professor) Frank Easterbrook on the harm from false positives in enforcement (which are more easily corrected by market forces than false negatives), and by Justice (and Professor) Stephen Breyer on the value of bright line rules and safe harbors, supported by sound economic analysis.  As to specifics, the DOJ and FTC should issue clear statements of policy on the great respect that should be accorded the exercise of intellectual property rights, to correct Obama antitrust enforcers’ poor record on intellectual property protection (see, for example, here).  The DOJ and the FTC should also accord greater respect to the efficiencies associated with unilateral conduct by firms possessing market power, and should consider reissuing an updated and revised version of the 2008 DOJ Report on Single Firm Conduct).

With regard to international competition policy, procedural issues should be accorded high priority.  Full and fair consideration by enforcers of all relevant evidence (especially economic evidence) and the views of all concerned parties ensures that sound analysis is brought to bear in enforcement proceedings and, thus, that errors in antitrust enforcement are minimized.  Regrettably, a lack of due process in foreign antitrust enforcement has become a matter of growing concern to the United States, as foreign competition agencies proliferate and increasingly bring actions against American companies.  Thus, the Trump Administration should make due process problems in antitrust a major enforcement priority.  White House-level support (ensuring the backing of other key Executive Branch departments engaged in foreign economic policy) for this priority may be essential, in order to strengthen the U.S. Government’s hand in negotiations and consultations with foreign governments on process-related concerns.

Finally, other international competition policy matters also merit close scrutiny by the new Administration.  These include such issues as the inappropriate imposition of extraterritorial remedies on American companies by foreign competition agencies; the harmful impact of anticompetitive foreign regulations on American businesses; and inappropriate attacks on the legitimate exercise of intellectual property by American firms (in particular, American patent holders).  As in the case of process-related concerns, White House attention and broad U.S. Government involvement in dealing with these problems may be essential.

That’s all for now, folks.  May you all enjoy your turkey and have a blessed Thanksgiving with friends and family.

In anticompetitive market distortions, antitrust, federal trade commission, international competition, Justice Department, truth on the market , , , ,
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FCC Chairman Wheeler’s claimed fealty to FTC privacy standards is belied by the rules he actually proposes

Geoffrey Manne —  21 October 2016

Next week the FCC is slated to vote on the second iteration of Chairman Wheeler’s proposed broadband privacy rules. Of course, as has become all too common, none of us outside the Commission has actually seen the proposal. But earlier this month Chairman Wheeler released a Fact Sheet that suggests some of the ways it would update the rules he initially proposed.

According to the Fact Sheet, the new proposed rules are

designed to evolve with changing technologies and encourage innovation, and are in harmony with other key privacy frameworks and principles — including those outlined by the Federal Trade Commission and the Administration’s Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.

Unfortunately, the Chairman’s proposal appears to fall short of the mark on both counts.

As I discuss in detail in a letter filed with the Commission yesterday, despite the Chairman’s rhetoric, the rules described in the Fact Sheet fail to align with the FTC’s approach to privacy regulation embodied in its 2012 Privacy Report in at least two key ways:

  • First, the Fact Sheet significantly expands the scope of information that would be considered “sensitive” beyond that contemplated by the FTC. That, in turn, would impose onerous and unnecessary consumer consent obligations on commonplace uses of data, undermining consumer welfare, depriving consumers of information and access to new products and services, and restricting competition.
  • Second, unlike the FTC’s framework, the proposal described by the Fact Sheet ignores the crucial role of “context” in determining the appropriate level of consumer choice before affected companies may use consumer data. Instead, the Fact Sheet takes a rigid, acontextual approach that would stifle innovation and harm consumers.

The Chairman’s proposal moves far beyond the FTC’s definition of “sensitive” information requiring “opt-in” consent

The FTC’s privacy guidance is, in its design at least, appropriately flexible, aimed at balancing the immense benefits of information flows with sensible consumer protections. Thus it eschews an “inflexible list of specific practices” that would automatically trigger onerous consent obligations and “risk[] undermining companies’ incentives to innovate and develop new products and services….”

Under the FTC’s regime, depending on the context in which it is used (on which see the next section, below), the sensitivity of data delineates the difference between data uses that require “express affirmative” (opt-in) consent and those that do not (requiring only “other protections” short of opt-in consent — e.g., opt-out).

Because the distinction is so important — because opt-in consent is much more likely to staunch data flows — the FTC endeavors to provide guidance as to what data should be considered sensitive, and to cabin the scope of activities requiring opt-in consent. Thus, the FTC explains that “information about children, financial and health information, Social Security numbers, and precise geolocation data [should be treated as] sensitive.” But beyond those instances, the FTC doesn’t consider any other type of data as inherently sensitive.

By contrast, and without explanation, Chairman Wheeler’s Fact Sheet significantly expands what constitutes “sensitive” information requiring “opt-in” consent by adding “web browsing history,” “app usage history,” and “the content of communications” to the list of categories of data deemed sensitive in all cases.

By treating some of the most common and important categories of data as always “sensitive,” and by making the sensitivity of data the sole determinant for opt-in consent, the Chairman’s proposal would make it almost impossible for ISPs to make routine (to say nothing of innovative), appropriate, and productive uses of data comparable to those undertaken by virtually every major Internet company.  This goes well beyond anything contemplated by the FTC — with no evidence of any corresponding benefit to consumers and with obvious harm to competition, innovation, and the overall economy online.

And because the Chairman’s proposal would impose these inappropriate and costly restrictions only on ISPs, it would create a barrier to competition by ISPs in other platform markets, without offering a defensible consumer protection rationale to justify either the disparate treatment or the restriction on competition.

As Fred Cate and Michael Staten have explained,

“Opt-in” offers no greater privacy protection than allowing consumers to “opt-out”…, yet it imposes significantly higher costs on consumers, businesses, and the economy.

Not surprisingly, these costs fall disproportionately on the relatively poor and the less technology-literate. In the former case, opt-in requirements may deter companies from offering services at all, even to people who would make a very different trade-off between privacy and monetary price. In the latter case, because an initial decision to opt-in must be taken in relative ignorance, users without much experience to guide their decisions will face effectively higher decision-making costs than more knowledgeable users.

The Chairman’s proposal ignores the central role of context in the FTC’s privacy framework

In part for these reasons, central to the FTC’s more flexible framework is the establishment of a sort of “safe harbor” for data uses where the benefits clearly exceed the costs and consumer consent may be inferred:

Companies do not need to provide choice before collecting and using consumer data for practices that are consistent with the context of the transaction or the company’s relationship with the consumer….

Thus for many straightforward uses of data, the “context of the transaction,” not the asserted “sensitivity” of the underlying data, is the threshold question in evaluating the need for consumer choice in the FTC’s framework.

Chairman Wheeler’s Fact Sheet, by contrast, ignores this central role of context in its analysis. Instead, it focuses solely on data sensitivity, claiming that doing so is “in line with customer expectations.”

But this is inconsistent with the FTC’s approach.

In fact, the FTC’s framework explicitly rejects a pure “consumer expectations” standard:

Rather than relying solely upon the inherently subjective test of consumer expectations, the… standard focuses on more objective factors related to the consumer’s relationship with a business.

And while everyone agrees that sensitivity is a key part of pegging privacy regulation to actual consumer and corporate relationships, the FTC also recognizes that the importance of the sensitivity of the underlying data varies with the context in which it is used. Or, in the words of the White House’s 2012 Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World Report (introducing its Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights), “[c]ontext should shape the balance and relative emphasis of particular principles” guiding the regulation of privacy.

By contrast, Chairman Wheeler’s “sensitivity-determines-consumer-expectations” framing is a transparent attempt to claim fealty to the FTC’s (and the Administration’s) privacy standards while actually implementing a privacy regime that is flatly inconsistent with them.

The FTC’s approach isn’t perfect, but that’s no excuse to double down on its failings

The FTC’s privacy guidance, and even more so its privacy enforcement practices under Section 5, are far from perfect. The FTC should be commended for its acknowledgement that consumers’ privacy preferences and companies’ uses of data will change over time, and that there are trade-offs inherent in imposing any constraints on the flow of information. But even the FTC fails to actually assess the magnitude of the costs and benefits of, and the deep complexities involved in, the trade-off, and puts an unjustified thumb on the scale in favor of limiting data use.  

But that’s no excuse for Chairman Wheeler to ignore what the FTC gets right, and to double down on its failings. Based on the Fact Sheet (and the initial NPRM), it’s a virtual certainty that the Chairman’s proposal doesn’t heed the FTC’s refreshing call for humility and flexibility regarding the application of privacy rules to ISPs (and other Internet platforms):

These are complex and rapidly evolving areas, and more work should be done to learn about the practices of all large platform providers, their technical capabilities with respect to consumer data, and their current and expected uses of such data.

The rhetoric of the Chairman’s Fact Sheet is correct: the FCC should in fact conform its approach to privacy to the framework established by the FTC. Unfortunately, the reality of the Fact Sheet simply doesn’t comport with its rhetoric.

As the FCC’s vote on the Chairman’s proposal rapidly nears, and in light of its significant defects, we can only hope that the rest of the Commission refrains from reflexively adopting the proposed regime, and works to ensure that these problematic deviations from the FTC’s framework are addressed before moving forward.

In advertising, anticompetitive market distortions, barriers to entry, consumer protection, cost-benefit analysis, federal communications commission, federal trade commission, ftc, internet, privacy, regulation, section 5, technology, telecommunications , , , , , , , ,
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The FTC’s PAE Study Recommendations: Case Not Proven

Alden Abbott —  20 October 2016

On October 6, 2016, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued Patent Assertion Entity Activity: An FTC Study (PAE Study), its much-anticipated report on patent assertion entity (PAE) activity.  The PAE Study defined PAEs as follows:

Patent assertion entities (PAEs) are businesses that acquire patents from third parties and seek to generate revenue by asserting them against alleged infringers.  PAEs monetize their patents primarily through licensing negotiations with alleged infringers, infringement litigation, or both. In other words, PAEs do not rely on producing, manufacturing, or selling goods.  When negotiating, a PAE’s objective is to enter into a royalty-bearing or lump-sum license.  When litigating, to generate any revenue, a PAE must either settle with the defendant or ultimately prevail in litigation and obtain relief from the court.

The FTC was mindful of the costs that would be imposed on PAEs, required by compulsory process to respond to the agency’s requests for information.  Accordingly, the FTC obtained information from only 22 PAEs, 18 of which it called “Litigation PAEs” (which “typically sued potential licensees and settled shortly afterward by entering into license agreements with defendants covering small portfolios,” usually yielding total royalties of under $300,000) and 4 of which it dubbed “Portfolio PAEs” (which typically negotiated multimillion dollars licenses covering large portfolios of patents and raised their capital through institutional investors or manufacturing firms).

Furthermore, the FTC’s research was narrowly targeted, not broad-based.  The agency explained that “[o]f all the patents held by PAEs in the FTC’s study, 88% fell under the Computers & Communications or Other Electrical & Electronic technology categories, and more than 75% of the Study PAEs’ overall holdings were software-related patents.”  Consistent with the nature of this sample, the FTC concentrated primarily on a case study of PAE activity in the wireless chipset sector.  The case study revealed that PAEs were more likely to assert their patents through litigation than were wireless manufacturers, and that “30% of Portfolio PAE wireless patent licenses and nearly 90% of Litigation PAE wireless patent licenses resulted from litigation, while only 1% of Wireless Manufacturer wireless patent licenses resulted from litigation.”  But perhaps more striking than what the FTC found was what it did not uncover.  Due to data limitations, “[t]he FTC . . . [did not] attempt[] to determine if the royalties received by Study PAEs were higher or lower than those that the original assignees of the licensed patents could have earned.”  In addition, the case study did “not report how much revenue PAEs shared with others, including independent inventors, or the costs of assertion activity.”

Curiously, the PAE Study also leaped to certain conclusions regarding PAE settlements based on questionable assumptions and without considering legitimate potential incentives for such settlements.  Thus, for example, the FTC found it particularly significant that 77% of litigation PAE settlements were for less than $300,000.  Why?  Because $300,000 was a “de facto benchmark” for nuisance litigation settlements, merely based on one American Intellectual Property Law Association study that claimed defending a non-practicing entity patent lawsuit through the end of discovery costs between $300,000 and $2.5 million, depending on the amount in controversy.  In light of that one study, the FTC surmised “that discovery costs, and not the technological value of the patent, may set the benchmark for settlement value in Litigation PAE cases.”  Thus, according to the FTC, “the behavior of Litigation PAEs is consistent with nuisance litigation.”  As noted patent lawyer Gene Quinn has pointed out, however, the FTC ignored the alternative eminently logical possibility that many settlements for less than $300,000 merely represented reasonable valuations of the patent rights at issue.  Quinn pithily stated:

[T]he reality is the FTC doesn’t know enough about the industry to understand that $300,000 is an arbitrary line in the sand that holds no relevance in the real world. For the very same reason that they said the term “patent troll” is unhelpful (i.e., because it inappropriately discriminates against rights owners without understanding the business model and practices), so too is $300,000 equally unhelpful. Without any understanding or appreciation of the value of the core innovation subject to the license there is no way to know whether a license is being offered for nuisance value or whether it is being offered at full, fair and appropriate value to compensate the patent owner for the infringement they had to chase down in litigation.

I thought the FTC was charged with ensuring fair business practices? It seems what they are doing is radically discriminating against incremental innovations valued at less than $300,000 and actually encouraging patent owners to charge more for their licenses than they are worth so they don’t get labeled a nuisance. Talk about perverse incentives! The FTC should stick to areas where they have subject matter competence and leave these patent issues to the experts.     

In sum, the FTC found that in one particular specialized industry sector featuring a certain  category of patents (software patents), PAEs tended to sue more than manufacturers before agreeing to licensing terms – hardly a surprising finding or a sign of a problem.  (To the contrary, the existence of “substantial” PAE litigation that led to licenses might be a sign that PAEs were acting as efficient intermediaries representing the interests and effectively vindicating the rights of small patentees.)  The FTC was not, however, able to comment on the relative levels of royalties, the extent to which PAE revenues were distributed to inventors, or the costs of PAE litigation (as opposed to any other sort of litigation).  Additionally, the FTC made certain assumptions about certain PAE litigation settlements that ignored reasonable alternative explanations for the behavior that was observed.  Accordingly, the reasonable observer would conclude from this that the agency was (to say the least) in no position to make any sort of policy recommendations, given the absence of any hard evidence of PAE abuses or excessive waste from litigation.

Unfortunately, the reasonable observer would be mistaken.  The FTC recommended reforms to: (1) address discovery burden and “cost asymmetries” (the notion that PAEs are less subject to costly counterclaims because they are not producers) in PAE litigation; (2) provide the courts and defendants with more information about the plaintiffs that have filed infringement lawsuits; (3) streamline multiple cases brought against defendants on the same theories of infringement; and (4) provide sufficient notice of these infringement theories as courts continue to develop heightened pleading requirements for patent cases.

Without getting into the merits of these individual suggestions (and without in any way denigrating the hard work and dedication of the highly talented FTC staffers who drafted the PAE Study), it is sufficient to note that they bear no logical relationship to the factual findings of the report.  The recommendations, which closely echo certain elements of various “patent reform” legislative proposals that have been floated in recent years, could have been advanced before any data had been gathered – with a saving to the companies that had to respond.  In short, the recommendations are classic pre-baked “solutions” to problems that have long been hypothesized.  Advancing such recommendations based on discrete information regarding a small skewed sample of PAEs – without obtaining crucial information on the direct costs and benefits of the PAE transactions being observed, or the incentive effects of PAE activity – is at odds with the FTC’s proud tradition of empirical research.  Unfortunately, Devin Hartline of the Antonin Scalia Law School proved prescient when commenting last April on the possible problems with the PAE Report, based on what was known about it prior to its release (and based on the preliminary thoughts of noted economists and law professors):

While the FTC study may generate interesting information about a handful of firms, it won’t tell us much about how PAEs affect competition and innovation in general.  The study is simply not designed to do this.  It instead is a fact-finding mission, the results of which could guide future missions.  Such empirical research can be valuable, but it’s very important to recognize the limited utility of the information being collected.  And it’s crucial not to draw policy conclusions from it.  Unfortunately, if the comments of some of the Commissioners and supporters of the study are any indication, many critics have already made up their minds about the net effects of PAEs, and they will likely use the study to perpetuate the biased anti-patent fervor that has captured so much attention in recent years.

To the extent patent reform is warranted, it should be considered carefully in a measured fashion, with full consideration given to the costs, benefits, and potential unintended consequences of suggested changes to the patent system and to litigation procedures.  As John Malcolm and I explained in a 2015 Heritage Foundation Legal Backgrounder which explored the relative merits of individual proposed reforms:

Before deciding to take action, Congress should weigh the particular merits of individual reform proposals carefully and meticulously, taking into account their possible harmful effects as well as their intended benefits. Precipitous, unreflective action on legislation is unwarranted, and caution should be the byword, especially since the effects of 2011 legislative changes and recent Supreme Court decisions have not yet been fully absorbed. Taking time is key to avoiding the serious and costly errors that too often are the fruit of omnibus legislative efforts.

Notably, this Legal Backgrounder also noted potential beneficial aspects of PAE activity that were not reflected in the PAE Study:

[E]ven entities whose business model relies on purchasing patents and licensing them or suing those who refuse to enter into licensing agreements and infringe those patents can serve a useful—even a vital—purpose. Some infringers may be large companies that infringe the patents of smaller companies or individual inventors, banking on the fact that such a small-time inventor will be less likely to file a lawsuit against a well-financed entity. Patent aggregators, often backed by well-heeled investors, help to level the playing field and can prevent such abuses.

More important, patent aggregators facilitate an efficient division of labor between inventors and those who wish to use those inventions for the betterment of their fellow man, allowing inventors to spend their time doing what they do best: inventing. Patent aggregators can expand access to patent pools that allow third parties to deal with one vendor instead of many, provide much-needed capital to inventors, and lead to a variety of licensing and sublicensing agreements that create and reflect a valuable and vibrant marketplace for patent holders and provide the kinds of incentives that spur innovation. They can also aggregate patents for litigation purposes, purchasing patents and licensing them in bundles.

This has at least two advantages: It can reduce the transaction costs for licensing multiple patents, and it can help to outsource and centralize patent litigation for multiple patent holders, thereby decreasing the costs associated with such litigation. In the copyright space, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) plays a similar role.

All of this is to say that there can be good patent assertion entities that seek licensing agreements and file claims to enforce legitimate patents and bad patent assertion entities that purchase broad and vague patents and make absurd demands to extort license payments or settlements. The proper way to address patent trolls, therefore, is by using the same means and methods that would likely work against ambulance chasers or other bad actors who exist in other areas of the law, such as medical malpractice, securities fraud, and product liability—individuals who gin up or grossly exaggerate alleged injuries and then make unreasonable demands to extort settlements up to and including filing frivolous lawsuits.

In conclusion, the FTC would be well advised to avoid putting forth patent reform recommendations based on the findings of the PAE Study.  At the very least, it should explicitly weigh the implications of other research, which explores PAE-related efficiencies and considers all the ramifications of procedural and patent law changes, before seeking to advance any “PAE reform” recommendations.

In federal trade commission, intellectual property, patent reform , ,
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Patents as a Key to Commercialization: Guidance for Patent-Antitrust Analysis

Alden Abbott —  28 September 2016

Public comments on the proposed revision to the joint U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) – U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust-IP Licensing Guidelines have, not surprisingly, focused primarily on fine points of antitrust analysis carried out by those two federal agencies (see, for example, the thoughtful recommendations by the Global Antitrust Institute, here).  In a September 23 submission to the FTC and the DOJ, however, U.S. International Trade Commissioner F. Scott Kieff focused on a broader theme – that patent-antitrust assessments should keep in mind the indirect effects on commercialization that stem from IP (and, in particular, patents).  Kieff argues that antitrust enforcers have employed a public law “rules-based” approach that balances the “incentive to innovate” created when patents prevent copying against the goals of competition.  In contrast, Kieff characterizes the commercialization approach as rooted in the property rights nature of patents and the use of private contracting to bring together complementary assets and facilitate coordination.  As Kieff explains (in italics, footnote citations deleted):

A commercialization approach to IP views IP more in the tradition of private law, rather than public law. It does so by placing greater emphasis on viewing IP as property rights, which in turn is accomplished by greater reliance on interactions among private parties over or around those property rights, including via contracts. Centered on the relationships among private parties, this approach to IP emphasizes a different target and a different mechanism by which IP can operate. Rather than target particular individuals who are likely to respond to IP as incentives to create or invent in particular, this approach targets a broad, diverse set of market actors in general; and it does so indirectly. This broad set of indirectly targeted actors encompasses the creator or inventor of the underlying IP asset as well as all those complementary users of a creation or an invention who can help bring it to market, such as investors (including venture capitalists), entrepreneurs, managers, marketers, developers, laborers, and owners of other key assets, tangible and intangible, including other creations or inventions. Another key difference in this approach to IP lies in the mechanism by which these private actors interact over and around IP assets. This approach sees IP rights as tools for facilitating coordination among these diverse private actors, in furtherance of their own private interests in commercializing the creation or invention.

This commercialization approach sees property rights in IP serving a role akin to beacons in the dark, drawing to themselves all of those potential complementary users of the IP-protected-asset to interact with the IP owner and each other. This helps them each explore through the bargaining process the possibility of striking contracts with each other.

Several payoffs can flow from using this commercialization approach. Focusing on such a beacon-and-bargain effect can relieve the governmental side of the IP system of the need to amass the detailed information required to reasonably tailor a direct targeted incentive, such as each actor’s relative interests and contributions, needs, skills, or the like. Not only is amassing all of that information hard for the government to do, but large, established market actors may be better able than smaller market entrants to wield the political influence needed to get the government to act, increasing risk of concerns about political economy, public choice, and fairness. Instead, when governmental bodies closely adhere to a commercialization approach, each private party can bring its own expertise and other assets to the negotiating table while knowing—without necessarily having to reveal to other parties or the government—enough about its own level of interest and capability when it decides whether to strike a deal or not.            

Such successful coordination may help bring new business models, products, and services to market, thereby decreasing anticompetitive concentration of market power. It also can allow IP owners and their contracting parties to appropriate the returns to any of the rival inputs they invested towards developing and commercializing creations or inventions—labor, lab space, capital, and the like. At the same time, the government can avoid having to then go back to evaluate and trace the actual relative contributions that each participant brought to a creation’s or an invention’s successful commercialization—including, again, the cost of obtaining and using that information and the associated risks of political influence—by enforcing the terms of the contracts these parties strike with each other to allocate any value resulting from the creation’s or invention’s commercialization. In addition, significant economic theory and empirical evidence suggests this can all happen while the quality-adjusted prices paid by many end users actually decline and public access is high. In keeping with this commercialization approach, patents can be important antimonopoly devices, helping a smaller “David” come to market and compete against a larger “Goliath.”

A commercialization approach thereby mitigates many of the challenges raised by the tension that is a focus of the other intellectual approaches to IP, as well as by the responses these other approaches have offered to that tension, including some – but not all – types of AT regulation and enforcement. Many of the alternatives to IP that are often suggested by other approaches to IP, such as rewards, tax credits, or detailed rate regulation of royalties by AT enforcers can face significant challenges in facilitating the private sector coordination benefits envisioned by the commercialization approach to IP. While such approaches often are motivated by concerns about rising prices paid by consumers and direct benefits paid to creators and inventors, they may not account for the important cases in which IP rights are associated with declines in quality-adjusted prices paid by consumers and other forms of commercial benefits accrued to the entire IP production team as well as to consumers and third parties, which are emphasized in a commercialization approach. In addition, a commercialization approach can embrace many of the practical checks on the market power of an IP right that are often suggested by other approaches to IP, such as AT review, government takings, and compulsory licensing. At the same time this approach can show the importance of maintaining self-limiting principles within each such check to maintain commercialization benefits and mitigate concerns about dynamic efficiency, public choice, fairness, and the like.

To be sure, a focus on commercialization does not ignore creators or inventors or creations or inventions themselves. For example, a system successful in commercializing inventions can have the collateral benefit of providing positive incentives to those who do invent through the possibility of sharing in the many rewards associated with successful commercialization. Nor does a focus on commercialization guarantee that IP rights cause more help than harm. Significant theoretical and empirical questions remain open about benefits and costs of each approach to IP. And significant room to operate can remain for AT enforcers pursuing their important public mission, including at the IP-AT interface.

Commissioner Kieff’s evaluation is in harmony with other recent scholarly work, including Professor Dan Spulber’s explanation that the actual nature of long-term private contracting arrangements among patent licensors and licensees avoids alleged competitive “imperfections,” such as harmful “patent hold-ups,” “patent thickets,” and “royalty stacking” (see my discussion here).  More generally, Commissioner Kieff’s latest pronouncement is part of a broader and growing theoretical and empirical literature that demonstrates close associations between strong patent systems and economic growth and innovation (see, for example, here).

There is a major lesson here for U.S. (and foreign) antitrust enforcement agencies.  As I have previously pointed out (see, for example, here), in recent years, antitrust enforcers here and abroad have taken positions that tend to weaken patent rights.  Those positions typically are justified by the existence of “patent policy deficiencies” such as those that Professor Spulber’s paper debunks, as well as an alleged epidemic of low quality “probabilistic patents” (see, for example, here) – justifications that ignore the substantial economic benefits patents confer on society through contracting and commercialization.  It is high time for antitrust to accommodate the insights drawn from this new learning.  Specifically, government enforcers should change their approach and begin incorporating private law/contracting/commercialization considerations into patent-antitrust analysis, in order to advance the core goals of antitrust – the promotion of consumer welfare and efficiency.  Better yet, if the FTC and DOJ truly want to maximize the net welfare benefits of antitrust, they should undertake a more general “policy reboot” and adopt a “decision-theoretic” error cost approach to enforcement policy, rooted in cost-benefit analysis (see here) and consistent with the general thrust of Roberts Court antitrust jurisprudence (see here).

In antitrust, antitrust division, federal trade commission, intellectual property , , , ,
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Global Antitrust Institute’s Comments on Draft DOJ-FTC IP Guidelines are on the Mark

Alden Abbott —  20 September 2016

The Global Antitrust Institute (GAI) at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School released today a set of comments on the joint U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) – Federal Trade Commission (FTC) August 12 Proposed Update to their 1995 Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property (Proposed Update).  As has been the case with previous GAI filings (see here, for example), today’s GAI Comments are thoughtful and on the mark.

For those of you who are pressed for time, the latest GAI comments make these major recommendations (summary in italics):

Standard Essential Patents (SEPs):  The GAI Comments commended the DOJ and the FTC for preserving the principle that the antitrust framework is sufficient to address potential competition issues involving all IPRs—including both SEPs and non-SEPs.  In doing so, the DOJ and the FTC correctly rejected the invitation to adopt a special brand of antitrust analysis for SEPs in which effects-based analysis was replaced with unique presumptions and burdens of proof. 

o   The GAI Comments noted that, as FTC Chairman Edith Ramirez has explained, “the same key enforcement principles [found in the 1995 IP Guidelines] also guide our analysis when standard essential patents are involved.”

o   This is true because SEP holders, like other IP holders, do not necessarily possess market power in the antitrust sense, and conduct by SEP holders, including breach of a voluntary assurance to license its SEP on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms, does not necessarily result in harm to the competitive process or to consumers. 

o   Again, as Chairwoman Ramirez has stated, “it is important to recognize that a contractual dispute over royalty terms, whether the rate or the base used, does not in itself raise antitrust concerns.”

Refusals to License:  The GAI Comments expressed concern that the statements regarding refusals to license in Sections 2.1 and 3 of the Proposed Update seem to depart from the general enforcement approach set forth in the 2007 DOJ-FTC IP Report in which those two agencies stated that “[a]ntitrust liability for mere unilateral, unconditional refusals to license patents will not play a meaningful part in the interface between patent rights and antitrust protections.”  The GAI recommended that the DOJ and the FTC incorporate this approach into the final version of their updated IP Guidelines.

“Unreasonable Conduct”:  The GAI Comments recommended that Section 2.2 of the Proposed Update be revised to replace the phrase “unreasonable conduct” with a clear statement that the agencies will only condemn licensing restraints when anticompetitive effects outweigh procompetitive benefits.

R&D Markets:  The GAI Comments urged the DOJ and the FTC to reconsider the inclusion (or, at the very least, substantially limit the use) of research and development (R&D) markets because: (1) the process of innovation is often highly speculative and decentralized, making it impossible to identify all market participants to be; (2) the optimal relationship between R&D and innovation is unknown; (3) the market structure most conducive to innovation is unknown; (4) the capacity to innovate is hard to monopolize given that the components of modern R&D—research scientists, engineers, software developers, laboratories, computer centers, etc.—are continuously available on the market; and (5) anticompetitive conduct can be challenged under the actual potential competition theory or at a later time.

While the GAI Comments are entirely on point, even if their recommendations are all adopted, much more needs to be done.  The Proposed Update, while relatively sound, should be viewed in the larger context of the Obama Administration’s unfortunate use of antitrust policy to weaken patent rights (see my article here, for example).  In addition to strengthening the revised Guidelines, as suggested by the GAI, the DOJ and the FTC should work with other component agencies of the next Administration – including the Patent Office and the White House – to signal enhanced respect for IP rights in general.  In short, a general turnaround in IP policy is called for, in order to spur American innovation, which has been all too lacking in recent years.

In antitrust, federal trade commission, intellectual property , , ,
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Time to Repeal the FTC’s Common Carrier Jurisdictional Exemption (Among Other Things)?

Alden Abbott —  19 September 2016

Section 5(a)(2) of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act authorizes the FTC to “prevent persons, partnerships, or corporations, except . . . common carriers subject to the Acts to regulate commerce . . . from using unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.”  On August 29, in FTC v. AT&T, the Ninth Circuit issued a decision that exempts non-common carrier data services from U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) jurisdiction, merely because they are offered by a company that has common carrier status.  This case involved an FTC allegation that AT&T had “throttled” data (slowed down Internet service) for “unlimited mobile data” customers without adequate consent or disclosures, in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act.  The FTC had claimed that although AT&T mobile wireless voice services were a common carrier service, the company’s mobile wireless data services were not, and, thus, were subject to FTC oversight.  Reversing a federal district court’s refusal to grant AT&T’s motion to dismiss, the Ninth Circuit concluded that “when Congress used the term ‘common carrier’ in the FTC Act, [there is no indication] it could only have meant ‘common carrier to the extent engaged in common carrier activity.’”  The Ninth Circuit therefore determined that “a literal reading of the words Congress selected simply does comport with [the FTC’s] activity-based approach.”  The FTC’s pending case against AT&T in the Northern District of California (which is within the Ninth Circuit) regarding alleged unfair and deceptive advertising of satellite services by AT&T subsidiary DIRECTTV (see here) could be affected by this decision.

The Ninth Circuit’s AT&T holding threatens to further extend the FCC’s jurisdictional reach at the expense of the FTC.  It comes on the heels of the divided D.C. Circuit’s benighted and ill-reasoned decision (see here) upholding the FCC’s “Open Internet Order,” including its decision to reclassify Internet broadband service as a common carrier service.  That decision subjects broadband service to heavy-handed and costly FCC “consumer protection” regulation, including in the area of privacy.  The FCC’s overly intrusive approach stands in marked contrast to the economic efficiency considerations (albeit not always perfectly applied) that underlie FTC consumer protection mode of analysis.  As I explained in a May 2015 Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum,  the FTC’s highly structured, analytic, fact-based methodology, combined with its vast experience in privacy and data security investigations, make it a far better candidate than the FCC to address competition and consumer protection problems in the area of broadband.

I argued in this space in March 2016 that, should the D.C. Circuit uphold the FCC’s Open Internet Order, Congress should carefully consider whether to strip the FCC of regulatory authority in this area (including, of course, privacy practices) and reassign it to the FTC.  The D.C. Circuit’s decision upholding that Order, combined with the Ninth Circuit’s latest ruling, makes the case for potential action by the next Congress even more urgent.

While it is at it, the next Congress should also weigh whether to repeal the FTC’s common carrier exemption, as well as all special exemptions for specified categories of institutions, such as banks, savings and loans, and federal credit unions (see here).  In so doing, Congress might also do away with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an unaccountable bureaucracy whose consumer protection regulatory responsibilities should cease (see my February 2016 Heritage Legal Memorandum here).

Finally, as Heritage Foundation scholars have urged, Congress should look into enacting additional regulatory reform legislation, such as requiring congressional approval of new major regulations issued by agencies (including financial services regulators) and subjecting “independent” agencies (including the FCC) to executive branch regulatory review.

That’s enough for now.  Stay tuned.

In consumer financial protection bureau, consumer protection, federal trade commission, ftc , , ,
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Congressional testimony on legislative reform proposals for the FTC

Geoffrey Manne —  26 May 2016

Earlier this week I testified before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade regarding several proposed FTC reform bills.

You can find my written testimony here. That testimony was drawn from a 100 page report, authored by Berin Szoka and me, entitled “The Federal Trade Commission: Restoring Congressional Oversight of the Second National Legislature — An Analysis of Proposed Legislation.” In the report we assess 9 of the 17 proposed reform bills in great detail, and offer a host of suggested amendments or additional reform proposals that, we believe, would help make the FTC more accountable to the courts. As I discuss in my oral remarks, that judicial oversight was part of the original plan for the Commission, and an essential part of ensuring that its immense discretion is effectively directed toward protecting consumers as technology and society evolve around it.

The report is “Report 2.0” of the FTC: Technology & Reform Project, which was convened by the International Center for Law & Economics and TechFreedom with an inaugural conference in 2013. Report 1.0 lays out some background on the FTC and its institutional dynamics, identifies the areas of possible reform at the agency, and suggests the key questions/issues each of them raises.

The text of my oral remarks follow, or, if you prefer, you can watch them here:

Chairman Burgess, Ranking Member Schakowsky, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

I’m Executive Director of the International Center for Law & Economics, a non-profit, non-partisan research center. I’m a former law professor, I used to work at Microsoft, and I had what a colleague once called the most illustrious FTC career ever — because, at approximately 2 weeks, it was probably the shortest.

I’m not typically one to advocate active engagement by Congress in anything (no offense). But the FTC is different.

Despite Congressional reforms, the FTC remains the closest thing we have to a second national legislature. Its jurisdiction covers nearly every company in America. Section 5, at its heart, runs just 20 words — leaving the Commission enormous discretion to make policy decisions that are essentially legislative.

The courts were supposed to keep the agency on course. But they haven’t. As Former Chairman Muris has written, “the agency has… traditionally been beyond judicial control.”

So it’s up to Congress to monitor the FTC’s processes, and tweak them when the FTC goes off course, which is inevitable.

This isn’t a condemnation of the FTC’s dedicated staff. Rather, this one way ratchet of ever-expanding discretion is simply the nature of the beast.

Yet too many people lionize the status quo. They see any effort to change the agency from the outside as an affront. It’s as if Congress was struck by a bolt of lightning in 1914 and the Perfect Platonic Agency sprang forth.

But in the real world, an agency with massive scope and discretion needs oversight — and feedback on how its legal doctrines evolve.

So why don’t the courts play that role? Companies essentially always settle with the FTC because of its exceptionally broad investigatory powers, its relatively weak standard for voting out complaints, and the fact that those decisions effectively aren’t reviewable in federal court.

Then there’s the fact that the FTC sits in judgment of its own prosecutions. So even if a company doesn’t settle and actually wins before the ALJ, FTC staff still wins 100% of the time before the full Commission.

Able though FTC staffers are, this can’t be from sheer skill alone.

Whether by design or by neglect, the FTC has become, as Chairman Muris again described it, “a largely unconstrained agency.”

Please understand: I say this out of love. To paraphrase Churchill, the FTC is the “worst form of regulatory agency — except for all the others.”

Eventually Congress had to course-correct the agency — to fix the disconnect and to apply its own pressure to refocus Section 5 doctrine.

So a heavily Democratic Congress pressured the Commission to adopt the Unfairness Policy Statement in 1980. The FTC promised to restrain itself by balancing the perceived benefits of its unfairness actions against the costs, and not acting when injury is insignificant or consumers could have reasonably avoided injury on their own. It is, inherently, an economic calculus.

But while the Commission pays lip service to the test, you’d be hard-pressed to identify how (or whether) it’s implemented it in practice. Meanwhile, the agency has essentially nullified the “materiality” requirement that it volunteered in its 1983 Deception Policy Statement.

Worst of all, Congress failed to anticipate that the FTC would resume exercising its vast discretion through what it now proudly calls its “common law of consent decrees” in data security cases.

Combined with a flurry of recommended best practices in reports that function as quasi-rulemakings, these settlements have enabled the FTC to circumvent both Congressional rulemaking reforms and meaningful oversight by the courts.

The FTC’s data security settlements aren’t an evolving common law. They’re a static statement of “reasonable” practices, repeated about 55 times over the past 14 years. At this point, it’s reasonable to assume that they apply to all circumstances — much like a rule (which is, more or less, the opposite of the common law).

Congressman Pompeo’s SHIELD Act would help curtail this practice, especially if amended to include consent orders and reports. It would also help focus the Commission on the actual elements of the Unfairness Policy Statement — which should be codified through Congressman Mullins’ SURE Act.

Significantly, only one data security case has actually come before an Article III court. The FTC trumpets Wyndham as an out-and-out win. But it wasn’t. In fact, the court agreed with Wyndham on the crucial point that prior consent orders were of little use in trying to understand the requirements of Section 5.

More recently the FTC suffered another rebuke. While it won its product design suit against Amazon, the Court rejected the Commission’s “fencing in” request to permanently hover over the company and micromanage practices that Amazon had already ended.

As the FTC grapples with such cutting-edge legal issues, it’s drifting away from the balance it promised Congress.

But Congress can’t fix these problems simply by telling the FTC to take its bedrock policy statements more seriously. Instead it must regularly reassess the process that’s allowed the FTC to avoid meaningful judicial scrutiny. The FTC requires significant course correction if its model is to move closer to a true “common law.”

In advertising, antitrust, competition advocacy, consumer protection, cost-benefit analysis, data security, disgorgement, federal trade commission, ftc, international center for law & economics, law and economics, mergers & acquisitions, privacy, regulation, regulatory reform, section 5 , , , , , ,
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