“Reflections”: Looking Back and Looking Ahead on Recent Innovations in Merger Review at the Antitrust Division
I. Introduction
Thank you to the Georgetown Law Global Antitrust Enforcement Symposium for inviting me back to participate today.
As some of you know, I have a background as a patent lawyer, so I have a particular affinity for innovation. Fortunately for me, innovation is an important byproduct of protecting competition through antitrust enforcement. I am also pleased that innovation is a defining feature of my tenure as Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division. Last week marked the three-year anniversary of when I was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in as Assistant Attorney General, so I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on lessons I have learned in my tenure, and to highlight some of the innovations at the Division that have resulted from those lessons.
As many of you know, while Assistant Attorney General, I have sought to increase transparency regarding the Division’s practices. For example, we recently issued the Vertical Merger Guidelines, which describe how the agencies evaluate vertical transactions. The Division’s guidelines on this topic were 36 years old, and much had changed in the way we looked at these transactions. This is not surprising. To give you a sense of the world 36 years ago, we were navigating using paper maps, cleaning and rewearing our
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