June 2013 Blog o’ Blogs

CPI
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CPI Blog o’ blogs – June 2013, Volume 3, Number 6

Lots of fun stuff this month – a spirited debate on loyalty discounts started by Josh Wright, Obama weighs in on patents, the FCC gets a judicial putdown, the French continue to wear an antibusiness beret, the EU Commission and Courts are both met with skepticism, and care for a little gun jumping? 

Should There Be a Safe Harbor for Above-Cost Loyalty Discounts? Why I Believe Wright’s Wrong

Commissioner Wright…seems oddly unconcerned about the chilling effect his decidedly pro-plaintiff approach to loyalty discounts will produce.

Thom Lambert (Truth on the Market)

Commissioner Wright’s Rejection of a Price-Cost Test for Loyalty Discounts

Where we differ is on the question of whether antitrust law should ever condemn a loyalty discount that the allegedly excluded rival could have met without pricing below cost.

Daniel Crane (Truth on the Market)

Wright is Right and Price-Cost Safe Harbors are Wrong

It appears that rigorous antitrust analysis sometimes makes what some would view as strange bedfellows.

Steve Salop (Truth on the Market)

Wright is Right and Wright is Wrong

The current debate is solely about whether there should be a price-cost screen in loyalty discount cases.

Daniel Crane (Truth on the Market)

Obama’s Patent Push

The Legal Authority Behind Obama’s Patent Push

Lawmakers write the laws, and executives enforce them. But sometimes the roles get jumbled.

Jacob Gershman (WSJ Law Blog)

Patent Experts Weight In On President’s Plan

Mark Lemley said he thought the Obama administration wisely “shied away from attacking trolls themselves.”

Jacob Gershman (WSJ Law Blog)

U.S. Appeals Court Judge Says FCC Ignored Antitrust Law

Kavanaugh’s opinion included a section extolling the virtues of vertical integration…as long as the company involved does not have market power.

David Ingram (Reuters News and Insight)

French minister hits at Amazon ‘dumping’

France’s culture minister has attacked Amazon, the online retailer, for deliberately undercutting traditional rivals to create a “quasi-monopoly.

Hugh Carnegy (Finanial Times)

Delay in Competition Cases

She seems to be expecting the GC to behave like Dobby the house elf in Harry Potter, who punished himself for disobeying his masters.

Cosmo Graham (Competition Law Blog)

Competition law and sport: we need more – not less- ‘financial fair play’ in Europe

I thought this is a good occasion to point out why more measures actively promoting competitive balance [in sports teams], not less, would be needed in Europe.

Pablo Ibáñez Colomo (Chillin’ Competition)

Stumbling Out of the Blocks

When does pre-closing integration planning cross the line to become gun jumping that can create antitrust liability?

Adam Miller (Upward Pricing Pressure)