Antitrust in an Election Year – Open v. Closed Ecosystems from an Antitrust Perspective

Below, we have provided the full transcript of the panel discussion, Open v. Closed Ecosystems from an Antitrust Perspective, from the final episode of our series, Antitrust In an Election Year: Challenges Ahead.

Richard SCHMALENSEE:

I believe it’s time to start the panel discussion. Our topic today is closed versus open ecosystems from an antitrust perspective. We have three distinguished panelists to explore this issue, this topic. Maureen Ohlhausen from Baker Botts, Darren Tucker from Vinson & Elkins, and Hal Varian from Google. Those of you who are participating in hopes of seeing Nikhil Shanbhag from Facebook will be disappointed because he had to cancel at the last minute.

This is an area in which there are a lot of buzzwords, and terms are thrown around as if their definitions are well understood, but to paraphrase Barney Frank, while we’re all entitled to our own opinions, we shouldn’t all be entitled to our own definitions. So I want to ask the panelists when they make their opening remarks to say a word or two about what makes an ecosystem open or closed. Is the key the role of open standards? Something else? A number of things? Let’s lead off with Maureen.

Maureen OHLHAUSEN:

Well thanks Dick, thanks for having me. I’m delighted to be here to speak. On the question of what’s an open system or a closed system, I think those are more terms of general description than of falling into any particular buc