Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, Makan Delrahim, responded in a letter dated May 18, to Rutgers University Professor Michael Carrier and former Federal Trade Commission Chairman Timothy Muris who, with 75 other academics and former US antitrust enforcers, wrote him on May 17, critiquing his recent speeches on patents and patent holdup.
In his reply, Mr. Delrahim affirmed the Antitrust Division’s welcome of lively discussion and research regarding its policies; cited and included in his response a letter signed by 13 prominent scholars in antitrust law and economics, former enforcers, and judges in support of those policies; and reaffirmed the Department of Justice’s view that the policies of the United States “reflect [their] observations and understanding of, among other things, actual standard setting activity, actions of participants in SSOs (including both patent holders and implementers), the current state of theoretical and empirical research into these matters, and, of course, the status of patent rights under the US Constitution.”
