Archives For Section 2

FTC Biweekly UMC Roundup – Mountain of Puffery Edition

Daniel J. Gilman —  4 November 2022

Research still matters, so I recommend video from the Federal Trade Commission’s 15th Annual Microeconomics Conference, if you’ve not already seen it. It’s a valuable event, and it’s part of the FTC’s still important statutory-research mission. It also reminds me that the FTC’s excellent, if somewhat diminished, Bureau of Economics still has no director; Marta Woskinska concluded her very short tenure in February. Eight-plus months of hiring and appointments (and many departures) later, she’s not been replaced. Priorities.

The UMC Watch Continues: In 2015, the FTC issued a Statement of Enforcement Principles Regarding “Unfair Methods of Competition.” On July 1, 2021, the Commission withdrew the statement on a 3-2 vote, sternly rebuking its predecessors: “the 2015 Statement …abrogates the Commission’s congressionally mandated duty to use its expertise to identify and combat unfair methods of competition even if they do not violate a separate antitrust statute.”

That was surprising. First, it actually presaged a downturn in enforcement. Second, while the 2015 statement was not empty, many agreed with Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen’s 2015 dissent that it offered relatively little new guidance on UMC enforcement. In other words, stating that conduct “will be evaluated under a framework similar to the rule of reason” seemed not much of a limiting principle to some, if far too much of one to others. Eye of the beholder. 

Third, as Commissioners Noah Phillips and Christine S. Wilson noted in their dissent, given that there was no replacement, it was “[h]inting at the prospect of dramatic new liability without any guide regarding what the law permits or proscribes.” The business and antitrust communities were put on watch: winter is coming. Winter is still coming. In September, Chair Lina Khan stated that one of her top priorities “has been the preparation of a policy statement on Section 5 that reflects the statutory text, our institutional structure, the history of the statute, and the case law.” Indeed. More recently, she said she was hopeful that the statement would be released in “the coming weeks.”  Stay tuned. 

There was September success, and a little mission creep at the DOJ Antitrust Division: Congrats to the U.S. Justice Department for some uncharacteristic success, and not a little creativity. In U.S. v. Nathan Nephi Zito, the defendant pleaded guilty to illegal monopolization for proposing that he and a competitor allocate markets for highway-crack-sealing services.  

The odd part, and an FTC connection that was noted by Pallavi Guniganti and Gus Hurwitz: at issue was a single charge of monopolization in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act. There’s long been widespread agreement that the bounds of Section 5 UMC authority exceed those of the Sherman Act, along with widespread disagreement on the extent to which that’s true, but there was consensus on invitations to collude. Agreements to fix prices or allocate markets are per se violations of Section 1. Refused invitations to collude are not, or were not. But as the FTC stated in its now-withdrawn Statement of Enforcement Principles, UMC authority extends to conduct “that, if allowed to mature or complete, could violate the Sherman or Clayton Act.” But the FTC didn’t bring the case against Zito, the competitor rejected the invitation, and nobody alleged a violation of either Sherman Section 1 or FTC Section 5. 

The admitted conduct seems indefensible, under Section 5, so perhaps there’s no harm ex post, but I wonder where this is going.     

DOJ also had a Halloween win when Judge Florence Y. Pan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, sitting by designation in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, issued an order blocking the proposed merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. The opinion is still sealed. But based on the complaint, it was a relatively straightforward monopsony case, albeit one with a very narrow market definition: two market definitions, but with most of the complaint and the more convincing story about “the market for acquisition of publishing rights to anticipated top-selling books.” Steven King, Oprah Winfrey, etc. 

Maybe they got it right, although Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter’s description seems a bit of puffery, if not a mountain of it: “The proposed merger would have reduced competition, decreased author compensation, diminished the breadth, depth, and diversity of our stories and ideas, and ultimately impoverished our democracy.”

At the margin? The Division did not need to prove harm to consumers downstream, although it alleged such harm. Here’s a policy question: suppose the deal would have lowered advances paid to top-selling authors—those cited in the complaint are mostly in the millions of dollars—but suppose DOJ was wrong about the larger market and downstream effects. If publisher savings were accompanied by a slight reduction in book prices, not output, would that have been a bad result?    

And you thought entry was procompetitive? For some, Halloween fright does not abate with daylight. On Nov. 1, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter, writing “with serious concern about emerging competition and consumer protection issues that Big Tech’s expansion into the automotive industry poses.” I gather that “emerging” is a term of art in legal French meaning “possible, maybe.” The senator writes with great imagination and not a little drama, cataloging numerous allegations about such worrisome conduct as bundling.

Of course, some tying arrangements are anticompetitive, but bundling is not necessarily or even typically anticompetitive. As an article still posted on the DOJ website explains, the “pervasiveness of tying in the economy shows that it is generally beneficial,” For instance, in the automotive industry, most consumers seem to prefer buying their cars whole rather than in parts.

It’s impossible to know that none of Warren’s myriad purported harms will come to pass in any market, but nobody has argued that the agencies ought to stop screening Hart-Scott-Rodino submissions. The need to act “quickly and decisively” on so many issues seems dubious. Perhaps there might be advantages to having technically sophisticated, data-rich, well-financed firms enter into product R&D and competition in new areas, including nascent product markets that might want more of such things for the technology that goes into vehicles that hurtle us down the highway.        

The Oct. 21 Roundup highlighted the FTC’s recent flood of regulatory proposals, including the “commercial surveillance” ANPR. Three new ANPRs were mentioned that week: one regarding “Junk Fees,” one regarding “Fake Reviews and Endorsements,” and one regarding potential updates to the FTC’s “Funeral Rule.” Periodic rule review is a requirement, so a potential update is not unusual. On the others, I recommend Commissioner Wilson’s dissents for an overview of legitimate concerns. In sum, the junk-ees ANPR is “sweeping in its breadth; may duplicate, or contradict, existing laws and rules; is untethered from a solid foundation of FTC enforcement; relies on flawed assumptions and vague definitions; ignores impacts on competition; and diverts scarce agency resources from important law enforcement efforts.” And if some “junk fees” are the result of deceptive or unfair practices under established standards, the ANPR also seems to refer to potentially useful and efficient unbundling. Wilson finds the “fake reviews and endorsements” ANPR clearer and better focused, but another bridge too far, contemplating a burdensome regulatory scheme while active enforcement and guidance initiatives are underway, and may adequately address material and deceptive advertising practices.

As Wilson notes, the costs of regulating are substantial, too. New proposals spring forth while overdue projects founder. For instance, the long, long overdue “10-year” review of the FTC’s Eyeglass Rule last saw an ANPR in 2015, following a 2004 decision to leave an earlier version of the rule in place. The Contact Lens Rule, implementing the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act, was initially adopted in 2004 and amended 16 years later, partly because the central provision of the rule had proved unenforceable, resulting in chronic noncompliance. The chair is also considering rulemaking on noncompete clauses. Again, there are worries that some anticompetitive conduct might prompt considerably overbroad regulation, given legitimate applications, a developing and mixed body of empirical literature, and recent activity in the states. It’s another area to wonder whether the FTC has either congressional authorization or the resources, experience, and expertise to regulate the conduct at issue–potentially, every employment agreement in the United States.

In Administrative Law, Antitrust & Competition, Antitrust at the Agencies Roundup, Antitrust Division, Cartels, Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department, Section 5, Tying , , , , , , , , , , ,
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The Bitter Fruits of Federal Antitrust ‘Reform’ Legislation

Alden Abbott —  25 July 2022

[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on Antitrust’s Uncertain Future: Visions of Competition in the New Regulatory Landscape. Information on the authors and the entire series of posts is available here.]

Much ink has been spilled regarding the potential harm to the economy and to the rule of law that could stem from enactment of the primary federal antitrust legislative proposal, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) (see here). AICOA proponents, of course, would beg to differ, emphasizing the purported procompetitive benefits of limiting the business freedom of “Big Tech monopolists.”

There is, however, one inescapable reality—as night follows day, passage of AICOA would usher in an extended period of costly litigation over the meaning of a host of AICOA terms. As we will see, this would generate business uncertainty and dampen innovative conduct that might be covered by new AICOA statutory terms. 

The history of antitrust illustrates the difficulties inherent in clarifying the meaning of novel federal statutory language. It was not until 21 years after passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act that the Supreme Court held that Section 1 of the act’s prohibition on contracts, combinations, and conspiracies “in restraint of trade” only covered unreasonable restraints of trade (see Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, 221 U.S. 1 (1911)). Furthermore, courts took decades to clarify that certain types of restraints (for example, hardcore price fixing and horizontal market division) were inherently unreasonable and thus per se illegal, while others would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis under a “rule of reason.”

In addition, even far more specific terms related to exclusive dealing, tying, and price discrimination found within the Clayton Antitrust Act gave rise to uncertainty over the scope of their application. This uncertainty had to be sorted out through judicial case-law tests developed over many decades.

Even today, there is no simple, easily applicable test to determine whether conduct in the abstract constitutes illegal monopolization under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. Rather, whether Section 2 has been violated in any particular instance depends upon the application of economic analysis and certain case-law principles to matter-specific facts.

As is the case with current antitrust law, the precise meaning and scope of AICOA’s terms will have to be fleshed out over many years. Scholarly critiques of AICOA’s language underscore the seriousness of this problem.

In its April 2022 public comment on AICOA, the American Bar Association (ABA)  Antitrust Law Section explains in some detail the significant ambiguities inherent in specific AICOA language that the courts will have to address. These include “ambiguous terminology … regarding fairness, preferencing, materiality, and harm to competition on covered platforms”; and “specific language establishing affirmative defenses [that] creates significant uncertainty”. The ABA comment further stresses that AICOA’s failure to include harm to the competitive process as a prerequisite for a statutory violation departs from a broad-based consensus understanding within the antitrust community and could have the unintended consequence of disincentivizing efficient conduct. This departure would, of course, create additional interpretive difficulties for federal judges, further complicating the task of developing coherent case-law principles for the new statute.

Lending support to the ABA’s concerns, Northwestern University professor of economics Dan Spulber notes that AICOA “may have adverse effects on innovation and competition because of imprecise concepts and terminology.”

In a somewhat similar vein, Stanford Law School Professor (and former acting assistant attorney general for antitrust during the Clinton administration) Douglas Melamed complains that:

[AICOA] does not include the normal antitrust language (e.g., “competition in the market as a whole,” “market power”) that gives meaning to the idea of harm to competition, nor does it say that the imprecise language it does use is to be construed as that language is construed by the antitrust laws. … The bill could be very harmful if it is construed to require, not increased market power, but simply harm to rivals.

In sum, ambiguities inherent in AICOA’s new terminology will generate substantial uncertainty among affected businesses. This uncertainty will play out in the courts over a period of years. Moreover, the likelihood that judicial statutory constructions of AICOA language will support “efficiency-promoting” interpretations of behavior is diminished by the fact that AICOA’s structural scheme (which focuses on harm to rivals) does not harmonize with traditional antitrust concerns about promoting a vibrant competitive process.

Knowing this, the large high-tech firms covered by AICOA will become risk averse and less likely to innovate. (For example, they will be reluctant to improve algorithms in a manner that would increase efficiency and benefit consumers, but that might be seen as disadvantaging rivals.) As such, American innovation will slow, and consumers will suffer. (See here for an estimate of the enormous consumer-welfare gains generated by high tech platforms—gains of a type that AICOA’s enactment may be expected to jeopardize.) It is to be hoped that Congress will take note and consign AICOA to the rubbish heap of disastrous legislative policy proposals.

In Antitrust & Competition, Antitrust’s Uncertain Future, Cartels, Exclusive Dealing, Monopolization, Platforms, Price Discrimination, Supreme Court, Symposia, Truth on the Market, Tying, Vertical Restraints , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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DOJ’s Threatened Reign of Error: Proposed Criminal-Monopolization Prosecutions

Alden Abbott —  17 June 2022

The Biden administration’s antitrust reign of error continues apace. The U.S. Justice Department’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division has indicated in recent months that criminal prosecutions may be forthcoming under Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, but refuses to provide any guidance regarding enforcement criteria.

Earlier this month, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard Powers stated that “there’s ample case law out there to help inform those who have concerns or questions” regarding Section 2 criminal enforcement, conveniently ignoring the fact that criminal Section 2 cases have not been brought in almost half a century. Needless to say, those ancient Section 2 cases (which are relatively few in number) antedate the modern era of economic reasoning in antitrust analysis. What’s more, unlike Section 1 price-fixing and market-division precedents, they yield no clear rule as to what constitutes criminal unilateral behavior. Thus, DOJ’s suggestion that old cases be consulted for guidance is disingenuous at best. 

It follows that DOJ criminal-monopolization prosecutions would be sheer folly. They would spawn substantial confusion and uncertainty and disincentivize dynamic economic growth.

Aggressive unilateral business conduct is a key driver of the competitive process. It brings about “creative destruction” that transforms markets, generates innovation, and thereby drives economic growth. As such, one wants to be particularly careful before condemning such conduct on grounds that it is anticompetitive. Accordingly, error costs here are particularly high and damaging to economic prosperity.

Moreover, error costs in assessing unilateral conduct are more likely than in assessing joint conduct, because it is very hard to distinguish between procompetitive and anticompetitive single-firm conduct, as DOJ’s 2008 Report on Single Firm Conduct Under Section 2 explains (citations omitted):

Courts and commentators have long recognized the difficulty of determining what means of acquiring and maintaining monopoly power should be prohibited as improper. Although many different kinds of conduct have been found to violate section 2, “[d]efining the contours of this element … has been one of the most vexing questions in antitrust law.” As Judge Easterbrook observes, “Aggressive, competitive conduct by any firm, even one with market power, is beneficial to consumers. Courts should prize and encourage it. Aggressive, exclusionary conduct is deleterious to consumers, and courts should condemn it. The big problem lies in this: competitive and exclusionary conduct look alike.”

The problem is not simply one that demands drawing fine lines separating different categories of conduct; often the same conduct can both generate efficiencies and exclude competitors. Judicial experience and advances in economic thinking have demonstrated the potential procompetitive benefits of a wide variety of practices that were once viewed with suspicion when engaged in by firms with substantial market power. Exclusive dealing, for example, may be used to encourage beneficial investment by the parties while also making it more difficult for competitors to distribute their products.

If DOJ does choose to bring a Section 2 criminal case soon, would it target one of the major digital platforms? Notably, a U.S. House Judiciary Committee letter recently called on DOJ to launch a criminal investigation of Amazon (see here). Also, current Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan launched her academic career with an article focusing on Amazon’s “predatory pricing” and attacking the consumer welfare standard (see here).

Khan’s “analysis” has been totally discredited. As a trenchant scholarly article by Timothy Muris and Jonathan Nuechterlein explains:

[DOJ’s criminal Section 2 prosecution of A&P, begun in 1944,] bear[s] an eerie resemblance to attacks today on leading online innovators. Increasingly integrated and efficient retailers—first A&P, then “big box” brick-and-mortar stores, and now online retailers—have challenged traditional retail models by offering consumers lower prices and greater convenience. For decades, critics across the political spectrum have reacted to such disruption by urging Congress, the courts, and the enforcement agencies to stop these American success stories by revising antitrust doctrine to protect small businesses rather than the interests of consumers. Using antitrust law to punish pro-competitive behavior makes no more sense today than it did when the government attacked A&P for cutting consumers too good a deal on groceries. 

Before bringing criminal Section 2 charges against Amazon, or any other “dominant” firm, DOJ leaders should read and absorb the sobering Muris and Nuechterlein assessment. 

Finally, not only would DOJ Section 2 criminal prosecutions represent bad public policy—they would also undermine the rule of law. In a very thoughtful 2017 speech, then-Acting Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Andrew Finch succinctly summarized the importance of the rule of law in antitrust enforcement:

[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.

Bringing criminal monopolization cases now, after a half-century of inaction, would be antithetical to the stability and continuity that underlie the rule of law. What’s worse, the failure to provide prosecutorial guidance would be squarely at odds with concerns of notice and reliance that inform the rule of law. As such, a DOJ decision to target firms for Section 2 criminal charges would offend the rule of law (and, sadly, follow the FTC ‘s recent example of flouting the rule of law, see here and here).

In sum, the case against criminal Section 2 prosecutions is overwhelming. At a time when DOJ is facing difficulties winning “slam dunk” criminal Section 1  prosecutions targeting facially anticompetitive joint conduct (see here, here, and here), the notion that it would criminally pursue unilateral conduct that may generate substantial efficiencies is ludicrous. Hopefully, DOJ leadership will come to its senses and drop any and all plans to bring criminal Section 2 cases.

In Amazon, Antitrust & Competition, Error Costs, Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department, Monopolization, Platforms, Price Discrimination, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Application of the Proper ‘Outer Boundary’ of Antitrust Liability for Alleged Refusals to Deal in New York v Facebook

George L. Paul, Jaclyn Phillips, & Andrew Black —  15 April 2022

The following post was authored by counsel with White & Case LLP, who represented the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) in an amicus brief filed on behalf of itself and 12 distinguished law & economics scholars with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in support of affirming U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg’s dismissal of various States Attorneys General’s antitrust case brought against Facebook (now, Meta Platforms).

Introduction

The States brought an antitrust complaint against Facebook alleging that various conduct violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The ICLE brief addresses the States’ allegations that Facebook refused to provide access to an input, a set of application-programming interfaces that developers use in order to access Facebook’s network of social-media users (Facebook’s Platform), in order to prevent those third parties from using that access to export Facebook data to competitors or to compete directly with Facebook.

Judge Boasberg dismissed the States’ case without leave to amend, relying on recent Supreme Court precedent, including Trinko and Linkline, on refusals to deal. The Supreme Court strongly disfavors forced sharing, as shown by its decisions that recognize very few exceptions to the ability of firms to deal with whom they choose. Most notably, Aspen Skiing Co. v. Aspen Highlands Skiing is a 1985 decision recognizing an exception to the general rule that firms may deal with whom they want that was limited, though not expressly overturned, by Trinko in 2004. The States appealed to the D.C. Circuit on several grounds, including by relying on Aspen Skiing, and advocating for a broader view of refusals to deal than dictated by current jurisprudence. 

ICLE’s brief addresses whether the District Court was correct to dismiss the States’ allegations that Facebook’s Platform policies violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act in light of the voluminous body of precedent and scholarship concerning refusals to deal. ICLE’s brief argues that Judge Boasberg’s opinion is consistent with economic and legal principles, allowing firms to choose with whom they deal. Furthermore, the States’ allegations did not make out a claim under Aspen Skiing, which sets forth extremely narrow circumstances that may constitute an improper refusal to deal.  Finally, ICLE takes issue with the States’ attempt to create an amorphous legal standard for refusals to deal or otherwise shoehorn their allegations into a “conditional dealing” framework.

Economic Actors Should Be Able to Choose Their Business Partners

ICLE’s basic premise is that firms in a free-market system should be able to choose their business partners. Forcing firms to enter into certain business relationships can have the effect of stifling innovation, because the firm getting the benefit of the forced dealing then lacks incentive to create their own inputs. On the other side of the forced dealing, the owner would have reduced incentives to continue to innovate, invest, or create intellectual property. Forced dealing, therefore, has an adverse effect on the fundamental nature of competition. As the Supreme Court stated in Trinko, this compelled sharing creates “tension with the underlying purpose of antitrust law, since it may lessen the incentive for the monopolist, the rival, or both to invest in those economically beneficial facilities.” 

Courts Are Ill-Equipped to Regulate the Kind of Forced Sharing Advocated by the States

ICLE also notes the inherent difficulties of a court’s assessing forced access and the substantial risk of error that could create harm to competition. This risk, ICLE notes, is not merely theoretical and would require the court to scrutinize intricate details of a dynamic industry and determine which decisions are lawful or not. Take the facts of New York v. Facebook: more than 10 million apps and websites had access to Platform during the relevant period and the States took issue with only seven instances where Facebook had allegedly improperly prevented access to Platform. Assessing whether conduct would create efficiency in one circumstance versus another is challenging at best and always risky. As Frank Easterbook wrote: “Anyone who thinks that judges would be good at detecting the few situations in which cooperation would do more good than harm has not studied the history of antitrust.”

Even assuming a court has rightly identified a potentially anticompetitive refusal to deal, it would then be put to the task of remedying it. But imposing a remedy, and in effect assuming the role of a regulator, is similarly complicated. This is particularly true in dynamic, quickly evolving industries, such as social media. This concern is highlighted by the broad injunction the States seek in this case: to “enjoin[] and restrain [Facebook] from continuing to engage in any anticompetitive conduct and from adopting in the future any practice, plan, program, or device having a similar purpose or effect to the anticompetitive actions set forth above.”  Such a remedy would impose conditions on Facebook’s dealings with competitors for years to come—regardless of how the industry evolves.

Courts Should Not Expand Refusal-to-Deal Analysis Beyond the Narrow Circumstances of Aspen Skiing

In light of the principles above, the Supreme Court, as stated in Trinko, “ha[s] been very cautious in recognizing [refusal-to-deal] exceptions, because of the uncertain virtue of forced sharing and the difficulty of identifying and remedying anticompetitive conduct by a single firm.” Various scholars (e.g., Carlton, Meese, Lopatka, Epstein) have analyzed Aspen Skiing consistently with Trinko as, at most, “at or near the boundary of § 2 liability.”

So is a refusal-to-deal claim ever viable?  ICLE argues that refusal-to-deal claims have been rare (rightly so) and, at most, should only go forward under the delineated circumstances in Aspen Skiing. ICLE sets forth the 10th U.S. Circuit’s framework in Novell, which makes clear that “the monopolist’s conduct must be irrational but for its anticompetitive effect.”

  • First, “there must be a preexisting voluntary and presumably profitable course of dealing between the monopolist and rival.”
  • Second, “the monopolist’s discontinuation of the preexisting course of dealing must suggest a willingness to forsake short-term profits to achieve an anti-competitive end.”
  • Finally, even if these two factors are present, the court recognized that “firms routinely sacrifice short-term profits for lots of legitimate reasons that enhance consumer welfare.”

The States seek to broaden Aspen Skiing in order to sinisterize Facebook’s Platform policies, but the facts do not fit. The States do not plead an about-face with respect to Facebook’s Platform policies; the States do not allege that Facebook’s changes to its policies were irrational (particularly in light of the dynamic industry in which Facebook operates); and the States do not allege that Facebook engaged in less efficient behavior with the goal of hurting rivals. Indeed, Facebook changed its policies to retain users—which is essential to its business model (and therefore, rational).

The States try to evade these requirements by arguing for a looser refusal-to-deal standard (and by trying to shoehorn the conduct as “conditional dealing”)—but as ICLE explains, allowing such a claim to go forward would fly in the face of the economic and policy goals upheld by the current jurisprudence. 

Conclusion

The District Court was correct to dismiss the States’ allegations concerning Facebook’s Platform policies. Allowing a claim against Facebook to progress under the circumstances alleged in the States’ complaint would violate the principle that a firm, even one that is a monopolist, should not be held liable for refusing to deal with a certain business partner. The District Court’s decision is in line with key economic principles concerning refusals to deal and consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision in Aspen Skiing. Aspen Skiing is properly read to severely limit the circumstances giving rise to a refusal-to-deal claim, or else risk adverse effects such as reduced incentive to innovate.  

Amici Scholars Signing on to the Brief

(The ICLE brief presents the views of the individual signers listed below. Institutions are listed for identification purposes only.)

Henry Butler
Henry G. Manne Chair in Law and Economics and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center, Scalia Law School		Daniel Lyons
Professor of Law, Boston College Law School
Richard A. Epstein
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NY School of Law, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Lecturer at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus		Geoffrey A. Manne
President and Founder, International Center for Law & Economics, Distinguished Fellow Northwestern University Center on Law, Business & Economics
Thomas Hazlett
H.H. Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics and Director of the Information Economy Project, Clemson University		Alan J. Meese
Ball Professor of Law, Co-Director, Center for the Study of Law and Markets, William & Mary Law School
Justin (Gus) Hurwitz
Professor of Law and Menard Director of the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center, University of Nebraska College of Law		Paul H. Rubin
Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Economics Emeritus, Emory University
Jonathan Klick
Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law; Erasmus Chair of Empirical Legal Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam		Michael Sykuta
Associate Professor of Economics and Executive Director of Financial Research Institute, University of Missouri Division of Applied Social Sciences
Thomas A. Lambert
Wall Chair in Corporate Law and Governance, University of Missouri Law School		John Yun
Associate Professor of Law and Deputy Executive Director of the Global Antitrust Institute, Scalia Law School
In Antitrust & Competition, Barriers to Entry, Exclusionary Conduct, Facebook, Platforms, Truth on the Market, Vertical Restraints , , , , , , , ,
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The latest round in the “product-hopping” battle

Joanna Shepherd —  5 November 2015

Thanks to the Truth on the Market bloggers for having me. I’m a long-time fan of the blog, and excited to be contributing.

The Third Circuit will soon review the appeal of generic drug manufacturer, Mylan Pharmaceuticals, in the latest case involving “product hopping” in the pharmaceutical industry — Mylan Pharmaceuticals v. Warner Chilcott.

Product hopping occurs when brand pharmaceutical companies shift their marketing efforts from an older version of a drug to a new, substitute drug in order to stave off competition from cheaper generics. This business strategy is the predictable business response to the incentives created by the arduous FDA approval process, patent law, and state automatic substitution laws. It costs brand companies an average of $2.6 billion to bring a new drug to market, but only 20 percent of marketed brand drugs ever earn enough to recoup these costs. Moreover, once their patent exclusivity period is over, brand companies face the likely loss of 80-90 percent of their sales to generic versions of the drug under state substitution laws that allow or require pharmacists to automatically substitute a generic-equivalent drug when a patient presents a prescription for a brand drug. Because generics are automatically substituted for brand prescriptions, generic companies typically spend very little on advertising, instead choosing to free ride on the marketing efforts of brand companies. Rather than hand over a large chunk of their sales to generic competitors, brand companies often decide to shift their marketing efforts from an existing drug to a new drug with no generic substitutes.

Generic company Mylan is appealing U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond’s April decision to grant defendant and brand company Warner Chilcott’s summary judgment motion. Mylan and other generic manufacturers contend that Defendants engaged in a strategy to impede generic competition for branded Doryx (an acne medication) by executing several product redesigns and ceasing promotion of prior formulations. Although the plaintiffs generally changed their products to keep up with the brand-drug redesigns, they contend that these redesigns were intended to circumvent automatic substitution laws, at least for the periods of time before the generic companies could introduce a substitute to new brand drug formulations. The plaintiffs argue that product redesigns that prevent generic manufacturers from benefitting from automatic substitution laws violate Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

Product redesign is not per se anticompetitive. Retiring an older branded version of a drug does not block generics from competing; they are still able to launch and market their own products. Product redesign only makes competition tougher because generics can no longer free ride on automatic substitution laws; instead they must either engage in their own marketing efforts or redesign their product to match the brand drug’s changes. Moreover, product redesign does not affect a primary source of generics’ customers—beneficiaries that are channeled to cheaper generic drugs by drug plans and pharmacy benefit managers.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly concluded that “the antitrust laws…were enacted for the protection of competition not competitors” and that even monopolists have no duty to help a competitor. The district court in Mylan generally agreed with this reasoning, concluding that the brand company Defendants did not exclude Mylan and other generics from competition: “Throughout this period, doctors remained free to prescribe generic Doryx; pharmacists remained free to substitute generics when medically appropriate; and patients remained free to ask their doctors and pharmacists for generic versions of the drug.” Instead, the court argued that Mylan was a “victim of its own business strategy”—a strategy that relied on free-riding off brand companies’ marketing efforts rather than spending any of their own money on marketing. The court reasoned that automatic substitution laws provide a regulatory “bonus” and denying Mylan the opportunity to take advantage of that bonus is not anticompetitive.

Product redesign should only give rise to anticompetitive claims if combined with some other wrongful conduct, or if the new product is clearly a “sham” innovation. Indeed, Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg and then-FTC Commissioner Joshua D. Wright recently came out against imposing competition law sanctions on product redesigns that are not sham innovations. If lawmakers are concerned that product redesigns will reduce generic usage and the cost savings they create, they could follow the lead of several states that have broadened automatic substitution laws to allow the substitution of generics that are therapeutically-equivalent but not identical in other ways, such as dosage form or drug strength.

Mylan is now asking the Third Circuit to reexamine the case. If the Third Circuit reverses the lower courts decision, it would imply that brand drug companies have a duty to continue selling superseded drugs in order to allow generic competitors to take advantage of automatic substitution laws. If the Third Circuit upholds the district court’s ruling on summary judgment, it will likely create a circuit split between the Second and Third Circuits. In July 2015, the Second Circuit court upheld an injunction in NY v. Actavis that required a brand company to continue manufacturing and selling an obsolete drug until after generic competitors had an opportunity to launch their generic versions and capture a significant portion of the market through automatic substitution laws. I’ve previously written about the duty created in this case.

Regardless of whether the Third Circuit’s decision causes a split, the Supreme Court should take up the issue of product redesign in pharmaceuticals to provide guidance to brand manufacturers that currently operate in a world of uncertainty and under the constant threat of litigation for decisions they make when introducing new products.

In Antitrust & Competition, Federal Trade Commission, Health Care, Intellectual Property, Patent, Pharmaceuticals, Regulation , , , , , , , , , ,
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Should the FTC Sue Google Over Search? A TechFreedom Debate This Friday

Geoffrey Manne —  25 September 2012

I will be speaking at a lunch debate in DC hosted by TechFreedom on Friday, September 28, 2012, to discuss the FTC’s antitrust investigation of Google. Details below.

TechFreedom will host a livestreamed, parliamentary-style lunch debate on Friday September 28, 2012, to discuss the FTC’s antitrust investigation of Google.   As the company has evolved, expanding outward from its core search engine product, it has come into competition with a range of other firms and established business models. This has, in turn, caused antitrust regulators to investigate Google’s conduct, essentially questioning whether the company’s success obligates it to treat competitors neutrally. James Cooper, Director of Research and Policy for the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University School of Law, will moderate a panel of four distinguished commenters to discuss the question, “Should the FTC Sue Google Over Search?”  

Arguing “Yes” will be:

Arguing “No” will be:

When:
Friday, September 28, 2012
12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Where:
The Monocle Restaurant
107 D Street Northeast
Washington, DC 20002

RSVP here. The event will be livestreamed here and you can follow the conversation on Twitter at #GoogleFTC.

For those viewing by livestream, we will watch for questions posted to Twitter at the #GoogleFTC hashtag and endeavor, as possible, to incorporate them into the debate.

Questions?
Email contact@techfreedom.org

In Antitrust & Competition, Google, International Center for Law & Economics, Platforms, Twitter , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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First reactions to the Intel Settlement

Dan Crane —  4 August 2010

I just finished watching the FTC webcast announcing the Intel settlement and did a quick read over the agreement itself. Some quick high-level reactions:

  1. The tone of the press conference was triumphant, of course. Leibowitz claimed that the FTC got 22 out of 26 of the remedies proposed in the complaint and that Intel, which had previously criticized the proposed remedies as unprecedented, was suddenly making the remedies “precedented.” Further study required here, but it’s far too glib to count victory based on 22 out of 26. Many of the proposed remedies contained suggestive, open-ended language which, if interpreted reasonably expansively, would have gone far beyond this settlement.
  2. To my ear, there was a big change in emphasis from the theory of the complaint. The complaint was predominantly about Intel’s exclusivity and rebating practices with customer with some deception theories thrown in to make it sound like a proper FTC case. The settlement is much more about intellectual property restrictions that prevent AMD and Via from outsourcing manufacturing when they become capacity constrained.
  3. Section 5 of the FTC Act: Leibowitz made a special point of reiterating his view that Section 5 is “a penumbra around the Sherman Act.” I happen to agree with that view, but it’s an open question whether this settlement really advances this view. It’s notable that the FTC has brought several Section 5 cases in the last few years and hasn’t chosen to litigate any of them all the way. Not saying it’s a bad decision, just pointing out that the status of Section 5 remains open after this settlement.
  4. Predatory design: This is an aspect of the settlement that I really can’t stomach. It makes me nervous to think that the FTC is going to have an open-ended right to decide that Intel’s design changes are predatory because they do not provide “any actual benefit” to the product. Benefits, like beauty, are often in the eye of the beholder.

More to follow.

In Antitrust & Competition, Federal Trade Commission, Intellectual Property, Law & Economics, Monopolization, Section 5 , , , , , , ,
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Comments on Jonathan Baker's Preserving a Political Bargain

Josh Wright —  21 May 2010

I’ve recently finished reading Jonathan Baker’s Preserving a Political Bargain: The Political Economy of the Non-Interventionist Challenge to Monopolization Enforcement, forthcoming in the Antitrust Law Journal.

Baker’s central thesis in Preserving a Political Bargain builds on earlier work concerning competition policy as an implicit political bargain that was reached during the 1940s between the more extreme positions of laissez-faire on the one hand and regulation on the other.  The new piece tries to explain what Baker describes as the “non-interventionist” critique of monopolization enforcement within this framework.  The piece is motivated, at least in part, by the Section 2 Report debates.  Baker’s basic story is fairly straightforward.  Under Baker’s account, competition policy is the outcome of the political bargaining process described above.  The “competition policy bargain” was then successfully modified in the 1980s in response to the Chicago School critique.  According to Baker, during the 1970s and 80s, “the Supreme Court revised many if not most of aspects of antitrust law along the lines suggested by legal and economic commentators loosely associated with the University of Chicago,” though this revolution changed the antitrust laws “dramatically but not fundamentally” and reflected a “bipartisan consensus in favor of reforming antitrust rules to enhance the efficiency gains arising from competition policy.”

Baker applies his “political bargain” framework to argue that the “modern non-interventionist critique,” unlike the successful attempt to modify the “terms” of the bargain in the 1980s, is highly likely to fail.  Baker defines the non-interventionist critique as relying on a particular series of legal and economic arguments.  For example, Baker describes the economic arguments deployed by the non-interventionists as that “markets are self-correcting,” “monopoly fosters economic growth,” “there is a single monopoly profit,” “excluded fringe rivals may not matter competitively,” “courts cannot reliably identify monopolization,” and so on.  Animated by the Section 2 Hearings, Report, its withdrawal, and the subsequent controversy, Baker begins from the assumption the non-interventionists are trying to modify an existing bargain, since non-interventionists are “the primary source of recent criticism of monopolization standards.”  From there, Baker argues that this concerted effort to modify the competition bargain in favor of less intervention is unlikely to succeed because such an attempted modification is unlikely to mobilize broader political support in the current social environment.

Let me start by saying that I agree entirely with the ultimate conclusion in so far as I don’t think there is any doubt that, in the current environment,  it is unlikely that the implicit “policy bargain” will be modified in a way that makes it more difficult for monopolization plaintiffs.  I have much more trouble with the premise of the exercise, and on how one knows a deviation from the current policy bargain when he sees one, and so will focus my critique on those issues.

Baker paints the picture of a dramatic and fundamental attack by non-interventionists on monopolization enforcement.  My response to the premise of the paper was: “What non-interventionist effort to further relax monopolization standards?” To be sure, there are plenty of folks who have cautioned against expansive use of Section 2.  It strikes me that the fundamental weakness in Baker’s analysis is that his starting point – the “terms” of the current political bargain — derives from  assumptions that don’t seem to square with reality.    In other words, rather than envisioning the current debates around Section 2 as an assault by non-interventionists, there is a much more compelling case that it is the interventionists attempting to “deviate” from whatever implicit political bargain exists with respect to competition policy.  Christine Varney’s declaration that there is “no such thing as a false positive” – the presence of such being a seminal observation since The Limits of Antitrust (in 1984, no less) immediately leaps to mind.  I will turn to making the case that it is the interventionists making the offer for modification below.

But first note that Baker leaves out of his list of “economic arguments” against Section 2 both error costs and that there is little empirical evidence that aggressive monopolization enforcement generates consumer benefits.  This is, in my view, an important omission since Baker makes the point that all of the other economic arguments have attracted rebuttals.  If there has been a rebuttal of the argument that the empirical evidence suggests that instances of anticompetitive exclusive dealing, RPM, tying and vertical integration are quite rare, or an empirical demonstration that monopolization enforcement has generated consumer welfare gains bet of error and administrative costs, I’d like to see it.  Further, note that the original Chicago School argument, a la Director & Levi, against monopolization enforcement was not that anticompetitive exclusion was impossible, but rather that it was sufficiently rare in the world as an empirical matter as to be irrelevant to policy formation.  Baker ignores this empirical, evidence-based non-interventionist critique, which, for example, has been the core of the position taken by modern academic skeptics of monopolization enforcement like myself, Dan Crane, Tim Muris, Bruce Kobayashi, Luke Froeb, and David Evans.

What is the evidence that there is a non-interventionist attack on the current competition policy bargain as it exists with respect to monopolization? Not much.  The first is that the non-interventionists are the “source of criticism of recent monopolization standards.”  In parts of the paper, Baker equates the non-interventionists with business interests.  But under that formulation, there is not much evidence to support this proposition.  If anything, and as Baker readily acknowledges in a footnote, the headlines seem to tell a story of AMD, Google, Microsoft, Adobe and others expending resources to instigate antitrust enforcement against rivals not to restrict the scope of Section 2.

Baker cites more generally the recent monopolization controversy as driven by the non-interventionist attempt to deviate from the status quo.  But this part of the analysis reads to me as driven entirely by assertion that the competition policy preferences that Baker appears to prefer are in the “political bargain” and deeming opposition to those (interventionist) policies attempted “deviations.”  Perhaps this is a problem of hammers and nails.  Baker’s more interventionist than I and so sees obstacles between his ideal vision of antitrust law and reality as caused by non-interventionists.  But I’ve got a different hammer and see different nails.  For example, I read the Section 2 Report as largely (but not entirely) limited to a description of Section 2 law as it exists and the vigorously dissenting voices coming from the interventionist crowd.  As George Priest has put it:

It’s fair enough for a succeeding administration to reject policies of its predecessor. But the Justice Department report was not authored by John Yoo or Alberto Gonzales. It was the work of a year-long study that considered recommendations from 29 panels and 119 witnesses, most of them critical of the minimalist Chicago School approach to antitrust law. The report’s conclusions basically track Supreme Court law with modest extensions in areas where the Supreme Court has not ruled. Ms. Varney denounced the report in its entirety.

Finding the evidence lacking of some strong non-interventionist attempt to impose dramatic change on Section 2 that deviates from the current political bargain, I offer an alternative hypothesis: it is the interventionists that are attempting to deviate from the current political bargain and propose change.

For starters, I think that Baker and I would agree that there actually is a “stable” competition policy bargain with respect to monopolization that has drawn bipartisan over the last twenty years – at least in the courts.  Note that even restricting attention to decisions during the George W. Bush administration from 2004-08, the total vote count of these decisions was 86-9, with 7 of 11 decisions decided unanimously, and only Leegin attracted more than two votes of dissent (and more likely, as others have pointed out, for its implications with respect to abortion jurisprudence than anything to do with the antitrust analysis of vertical restraints!).  The monopolization-related decisions of the modern era, including Trinko, Linkline, Credit Suisse, and Brooke Group have all made lift more difficult for plaintiffs in one way or another.  But as I’ve written on this blog over and over again, the error-cost analysis embedded in these decisions is a key feature of modern Section 2 jurisprudence that is part of the current bargain.  So as I understand it, these decisions must be part of the current bargain.  It would be difficult, in fact, to find another area of law in which the Court has articulated principles with such overriding unanimity despite persistent attempts by some scholars to advocate for an alternate overarching legal framework.  I think there is a much more compelling story – and one backed by greater evidence than Baker’s narrative — to tell about the modern attempt of the interventionists to renegotiate terms.    Let’s discuss some of the evidence.

For starters, the strongly-toned dissents from the Section 2 Report from both Agencies after Hearings with witnesses and testimony from all possible sides of debate — even the parts that merely describe the law — suggest dissatisfaction with the terms of the modern bargain Baker describes and that are represented by the monopolization case law created over the past several decades by supermajority Supreme Court decisions.  It is AAG Varney who recently, as Baker acknowledges in the paper, minimized the importance of Trinko under Section 2 in favor of “tried and true” cases like Aspen Skiing.  This is, of course, to say nothing of AAG Varney’s endorsement of an antitrust policy free of error-cost considerations.

Further, it is the interventionists at the Federal Trade Commission that have turned to an expanded vision of Section 5 to evade the constraints imposed by Section 2.  In fact, the Commission has explicitly announced that it does not think that the constraints imposed on plaintiffs under Section 2 should apply to the antitrust agencies!  If this is not an attempt to deviate from the existing political bargain in an interventionist direction, I’m not sure what is.  Put another way, interventionists are currently attempting to re-write existing Section 2 law – the “political bargain” – through Section 5. Given the Complaint in Intel and promised use of Section 5 in broad circumstances previously covered under the Section 2 law envisioned under the “stable” bargain that Baker describes as generating bipartisan support from Democrats and Republicans, surely this is an attempt to deviate from the prior bargain.

It is the interventionists that have provided new economic arguments in favor of greater antitrust enforcement.  For example, the recent trend towards reliance on behavioral economics endorsed by the agencies emerges out of dissatisfaction with Chicago and Post-Chicago School theories that adopt rational actor models and, presumably, inability to get substantial traction in the federal courts from existing interventionist models provided by the Post-Chicago School.

The interventionist assault on the current implicit competition policy bargain goes further than the agencies though.  Congress currently has in front of it pending legislation to take out of the courts the development of a rule of reason standard for minimum RPM, a Twombly-repealer, legislation to make reverse payments in pharmaceutical patent settlements illegal, and legislation to regulate interchange fees.  Every one of these proposals represents an interventionist reaction attempting to overturn a judicial application of current competition law and suggest that perhaps the interventionists do not trust the courts to oversee the political bargain.

The premise of Baker’s analysis (that the non-interventionists are strongly challenging the current status quo) is either false to begin with or practically irrelevant in light of the much more important interventionist challenge.  Note again that Baker’s claim is that the non-interventionists would fail in any attempt to reduce the scope of monopolization enforcement because they will not be able to generate more broad political support in the current environment.  No doubt that is true.  But what about the interventionists chances for success?  Baker’s analysis provides a very interesting lens to analysis evaluate questions like whether the interventionists will be successful in renegotiating the terms of the competition policy bargain.  At the moment, though things may be changing, they seem to have greater political support.  I think the most interesting conflict arising out of Baker’s interesting conception of competition between stakeholders in antitrust policy is that it illuminates what might be a battle for supremacy in governing the bargain between agencies and courts.  As Baker notes, the courts have been a critical part of establishing the terms of the bargain and adjudicating attempts to “re-negotiate” by private plaintiffs and agencies over time.  Recently, interventionists have attempted to shift antitrust (and consumer protection) enforcement away from courts and towards administrative agencies, such as with Section 5 and the proposed CFPA.   To me, these present more important and interesting policy questions than whether non-interventionists will be successful in further shrinking Section 2 law.  I believe that the prediction emerging from Baker’s model depends on what happens with the political environment in the next few years.

My prediction, for what its worth, is that the current policy bargain will certainly hold together in the courts.  The remarkable strength of the current Section 2 status quo is held together by a combination of the intuitive appeal of price theory for generalist judges relative to more interventionist Post-Chicago and Behavioral economic alternatives, the relative explanatory power of the so-called Chicago School theories relative to contenders.  Nothing there has changed.  I have less of a sense about the impact of Congressional changes, judicial nominations, and the rise of the EU as monopolization enforcer have on monopolization in the US.

In Antitrust & Competition, Error Costs, European Union, Exclusive Dealing, Facebook, Federal Trade Commission, Health Care, Intellectual Property, International, Justice Department, Patent, Pharmaceuticals, Platforms, Regulation, Section 5, Tying, Vertical Restraints , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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