Antitrust Enforcement Intellectual Property Rights Promoting Innovation Competition

In modern markets innovation is at least as great a concern as price competition. The book discusses how antitrust policy and patent and copyright laws interact to create market dynamics that affect both competition and innovation. Antitrust and intellectual property policies for the most part are complementary, sharing common goals of promoting innovation and economic welfare. In some cases, however, their distinct approaches, one based on competition and the other on exclusion, come into conflict. As antitrust authorities focus increasingly on ensuring that firms do not interfere with innovation by rivals or impede the pace of technological progress in an industry, they necessarily must confront difficult questions about the strength and scope of intellectual property rights. When should private property rights give way to public competition objectives? When is it appropriate to remedy anticompetitive outcomes through access to protected intellectual property? How does antitrust enforcement or competition itself affect incentives to innovate? Leading economists and lawyers address these questions from both US and EU perspectives in discussing salient antitrust cases involving intellectual property rights such as Microsoft, Magill, Kodak, IMS and Intel.

The volume offers an outstanding collection of studies on the interaction of IP and competition policy and is highly recommended for academics, graduate students, and practitioners with an interest in more theoretical studies. Ioannis Lianos, World Competition Each chapter in the Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Competition Law is written so lucidly that it will be of great interest to law professors and post graduate students of intellectual property and competition law, as well as those interested in innovation and competition theory, and legal practices in intellectual property and competition law. Madhu Sahni, Journal of Intellectual Property Rights This is a book that delivers on its promise. With a strong cast of contributors from a variety of countries, economies and disciplines, it makes the reader wonder how any commercially attractive IP ever gets exploited at all. IPKAT Here it comes: the book that I have been waiting for! This will surely be an inspiring source of knowledge in my Masters Programme in European Intellectual Property Law at Stockholm University. While promoting intellectual property protection as an important means for innovations and cultural developments, a critical analysis and a flexible approach to the needs for free creative space and effective competition is crucial. As this book so well illustrates, this delicate balance is no either or. Marianne Levin, Stockholm University, Sweden This comprehensive Handbook brings together contributions from American, Canadian, European, and Japanese writers to better explore the interface between competition and intellectual property law. Issues range from the fundamental to the specific, each considered from the angle of cartels, dominant positions, and mergers. Topics covered include, among others, technology licensing, the doctrine of exhaustion, network industries, innovation, patents, and copyright. Appropriate space is devoted to the latest developments in European and American antitrust law, such as the more economic approach and the question of anti-competitive abuses of intellectual property rights. Each original chapter reflects extensive comments by all other contributors, an approach which ensures a diversity of perspectives within a systematic framework. These cutting edge articles will be of great interest to law professors and postgraduate students of intellectual property and competition law, as well as those interested in innovation and competition theory, and legal practices in intellectual property and competition law.

Professor Ghidini has long since made himself a worldwide reputation as a leading scholar. He is a profound critic of intellectual property protection that follows rigid property logic, and favours the functionalist competition/innovation logic. Innovation, Competition and Consumer Welfare in Intellectual Property Law is truly enriching reading. Hanns Ullrich, College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium We in the United States have much to learn not only from Gustavo Ghidini s careful analysis of modern trends in the European IP regime but also from his thoughtful development of the thesis that free competition should be understood as the overarching principle guiding both IP protection and what we call antitrust law. Rudolph J.R. Peritz, New York Law School, US and author of Competition Policy in America This authoritative book provides a comprehensive critical overview of the basic IP paradigms, such as patents, trademarks and copyrights. Their intersection with competition law and their impacts on the exercise of social welfare are analysed from an evolutionary perspective. The analyses and proposals presented encompass the features and rationales of a legal field in constant evolution, and relate them to increasingly rapid technological, economic, social and geo-political developments. Gustavo Ghidini highlights the emerging trends that challenge the traditional all-exclusionary vision of IP law and its application. The author expertly combines holistic, evolutionary and constitutionally oriented approaches, with the search for a rebalancing of the IP rights holders positions with citizens and users rights. This book will appeal to academics, scholars and lawyers specializing in the realm of intellectual property, competition and comparative law.

The book ends with a comprehensive selection of the relevant bibliography. This part is all the more valuable to the reader as Ghidini does not simply list the relevant literature but puts it in it general context and comments on it. Ghidini s book is a fascinating trip through the system of IP laws. Beatriz Conde Gallego, Intellectual Property and Competition Law Intellectual Property and Competition Law by Gustavo Ghidini provides a persuasively presented descriptive analysis of a distinctively European perspective on intellectual property law and its relationship to competition law. Professor Ghidini expertly presents the evolution of intellectual property laws and its contemporary manifestations with respect to the expansion copyright law in technological fields and the inevitability conflict with patent law, the attempt at creating monopolies (such as in biotechnology), and so much more. A seminal work of impressive and articulate scholarship, Intellectual Property and Competition Law should be considered mandatory reading for students and researchers in the field of intellectual property rights and a very strongly recommended addition to academic library International Economics and Judicial Studies reference collections. The Economics Shelf, Midwest Book Review . . . the provocative nature of this book is one of its great strengths, as are its cohesiveness and erudition. Mel Marquis, European Competition Law Review We in the United States have much to learn not only from Gustavo Ghidini s careful analysis of modern trends in the European IP regime but also from his thoughtful development of the thesis that free competition should be understood as the overarching principle guiding both IP protection and what we call antitrust law. Rudolph J.R. Peritz, New York Law School, author of Competition Policy in America and American Antitrust Institute, US This rich and challenging book offers a critical appraisal of the relationship between intellectual property law and competition law, from a particularly European perspective. Gustavo Ghidini highlights the deficiencies in studying each of these areas of law independently and argues for a more holistic approach, insisting that it is more useful, and indeed essential, to consider them as interdependent. He does this first by examining how competition and intellectual property (IP) converge, diverge, and inform one another. Secondly, he assesses how IP law can be interpreted through the guiding principles of competition law antitrust and unfair competition and within the overarching principle of free competition. The book traces the evolution of modern IP law, which it claims is marked heavily both by over-protectionist trends such as the extension of copyright law to technological fields, where it trespasses on the territory of patent law and by attempts to monopolize the achievements of basic research, such as in the example of biotechnology. Through an examination of such emerging issues as access to standards of information and patenting of genetic materials, the author makes a clear case for a reading of IP law that promotes dynamic processes of innovation by competition , and competition by innovation , with related benefits to consumer welfare such as wider choices, greater access to culture and information, and lower prices. Advanced students and researchers in all areas of intellectual property will find this book a stimulating alternative to traditional interpretations of the subject.

Any legal regime must attempt to assess the trade-offs associated with rules that will affect incentives to innovate, allocative efficiency, competition, and freedom of economic actors to commercialize the fruits of their innovative labors. The essays in this book approach this critical set of problems from an economic perspective.

Competition and intellectual property rights (IPRs) are both necessary for a market to work efficiently and to promote consumer welfare. Properly applied, intellectual property rules define a legal framework which allows undertakings to profit from their inventions. This in turn encourages competition among firms and enhances dynamic efficiency, to the benefit of consumer welfare. Standard setting represents one of the fields where the interaction between competition law and IPRs clearly comes to light. The collaborative goal of standard setting organizations (SSOs) is to adopt and promote standards that either do not conflict with anyone’s right or, if they do, are developed under condition that patents are licensed under defined terms. This book examines the tension between IPRs and competition in the standard setting field which can arise when innovators over-exploit the rights they have been granted and hold up an entire industry. The book compares EU and U.S. jurisdictions with a particular focus on the IT and telecommunication sectors. It scrutinizes those practices which could harm standard setting and its goals, looking at misleading conducts by SSOs’ members which may lead to breach the EU and U.S. antitrust provisions on abuse of market power. Recent developments in EU and U.S. standard setting are analysed highlighting the differences in enforcement approaches. The book considers how the optimal balance between IPRs and industry standards can be struck, suggesting a policy model which takes into account both innovators’ interests and SSOs’ goals.