Liability For Antitrust Law Infringements And Protection Of Ip Rights In Distribution

This book gathers international and national reports from across the globe on key questions in the field of antitrust and intellectual property. The first part discusses the allocation of liability for infringement of antitrust laws between corporations and individuals. The book explores the criminal or administrative sanctions available against corporations, companies or group of companies, and individuals, such as employees or directors. A detailed international report explores the major trends and challenges in this field and provides an excellent comparative study of this complex and challenging subject. The second part examines whether intellectual property rights are sufficiently protected to ensure a fair return on investments made by manufacturers and distributors. This question comes at a time where distribution is facing deep and radical changes with the Internet. To what extent this is an opportunity or a threat to the sustainability of distribution systems of differentiated and IP protected goods is the question. This book brings together the current legal responses across a number of European countries and elsewhere in the world, all summarised and elaborated in an international report. The book also includes the resolutions passed by the General Assembly of the International League of Competition Law (LIDC) following a debate on each of these topics, which include proposed solutions and recommendations. The LIDC is a long-standing international association that focuses on the interface between competition law and intellectual property law, including unfair competition issues.

This book gathers international and national reports from across the globe on key questions in the field of antitrust and intellectual property. The first part discusses the allocation of liability for infringement of antitrust laws between corporations and individuals. The book explores the criminal or administrative sanctions available against corporations, companies or group of companies, and individuals, such as employees or directors. A detailed international report explores the major trends and challenges in this field and provides an excellent comparative study of this complex and challenging subject. The second part examines whether intellectual property rights are sufficiently protected to ensure a fair return on investments made by manufacturers and distributors. This question comes at a time where distribution is facing deep and radical changes with the Internet. To what extent this is an opportunity or a threat to the sustainability of distribution systems of differentiated and IP protected goods is the question. This book brings together the current legal responses across a number of European countries and elsewhere in the world, all summarised and elaborated in an international report. The book also includes the resolutions passed by the General Assembly of the International League of Competition Law (LIDC) following a debate on each of these topics, which include proposed solutions and recommendations. The LIDC is a long-standing international association that focuses on the interface between competition law and intellectual property law, including unfair competition issues. --

In Antitrust Law and Intellectual Property Rights: Cases and Materials, Christopher R. Leslie describes how patents, copyrights, and trademarks confer exclusionary rights on their owners, and how firms sometimes exercise this exclusionary power in ways that exceed the legitimate bounds of their intellectual property rights. Leslie explains that while substantive intellectual property law defines the scope of the exclusionary rights, antitrust law often provides the most important consequences when owners of intellectual property misuse their rights in a way that harms consumers or illegitimately excludes competitors. Antitrust law defines the limits of what intellectual property owners can do with their IP rights. In this book, Leslie explores what conduct firms can and cannot engage in while acquiring and exploiting their intellectual property rights, and surveys those aspects of antitrust law that are necessary for both antitrust practitioners and intellectual property attorneys to understand. This book is ideal for an advanced antitrust course in a JD program. In addition to building on basic antitrust concepts, it fills in a gap that is often missing in basic antitrust courses yet critical for an intellectual property lawyer: the intersection of intellectual property and antitrust law. The relationship between intellectual property and antitrust is particularly valuable as an increasing number of law schools offer specializations and LLMs in intellectual property. This book also provides meaningful material for both undergraduate and graduate business schools programs because it explains how antitrust law limits the marshalling of intellectual property rights.

Misuse is an increasingly important topic because of the central role intellectual property plays in our economy. The consequences of a misuse finding are severe: unenforceability of the patent or copyright involved, and defense to a suit to recover royalties in a license. The defense continues to arise in patent cases, has led to the dismissal of several recent copyright cases, and is now being asserted in trademark cases. The misuse defense thus represents a nexus of intellectual property and antitrust law and has the potential to affect business practices involving computer copyrights and other areas highly relevant in today's economic environment. This timely handbook covers the origin and development of the misuse doctrine, the debate about its scope and existence in relation to antitrust law, and its present status in patent, copyright, and trademark law. It also gives practical insights into how the doctrine affects both licensing and litigation practice.

An excellent account of practice on both sides of the Atlantic regarding the intersection of antitrust and intellectual property rights. The author provides a detailed account of the legal discussion in an economics-informed manner. A must read, as far as I am concerned, for practitioners and academicians alike. Petros C. Mavroidis, Columbia Law School, New York, US, University of Neuch'tel, Switzerland and CEPR, UK This book examines the growing divergences between the EU and the US in their approach to antitrust law enforcement, particularly where it relates to intellectual property (IP) rights. The scope of US antitrust law as defined in the Supreme Court s decisions in Trinko and Credit Suisse Securities is much narrower than the scope of EU competition law. US antitrust enforcers have become increasingly reluctant to apply antitrust rules to regulated markets, whereas the European Commission has consistently used EU competition rules to correct the externalities resulting from government action. The contrasting approaches adopted by US and EU antitrust enforcers to these issues, as with the differences in addressing market dominance, have had a profound impact on the scope of antitrust intervention in the IP field. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the relevant recent developments on both sides of the Atlantic and identifies the pitfalls of regulating IP through competition rules. With a unique comparative perspective, this book will be an invaluable resource for postgraduate students, academics and practitioners in IP and competition law.

This is the second edition of the Antitrust Section's handbook on the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission's Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property. Like its predecessor, this volume provides a description of the enforcement agencies' antitrust policy with respect to the licensing of patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and know-how. It also is updated to reflect the pertinent developments since the agencies issued their Guidelines seven years ago. Since 1995, the agencies have initiated a wide variety of enforcement actions involving intellectual property and have pursued claims ranging from alleged price fixing among patent holders to allegedly anticompetitive settlements of infringement litigation. This book discusses these enforcement actions and the recent judicial decisions in this area and also provides some historical perspective on the agencies' current policy with respect to the licensing of intellectual property. The book includes the complete text of the 1995 Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property.

For decades, the debate about the tension between IP and antitrust law has revolved around the question to what extent antitrust should accept that IP laws may bar competition in order to stimulate innovation. The rise of IP rights in recent years has highlighted the problem that IP may also impede innovation, if research for new technologies or the marketing of new products requires access to protected prior innovation. How this 'cumulative innovation' is actually accounted for under IP and antitrust laws in the EU and the US, and how it could alternatively be dealt with, are the central questions addressed in this unique study by lawyer and economist Thorsten Käseberg. Taking an integrated view of both IP and antitrust rules – in particular on refusals to deal based on IP – the book assesses policy levers under European and US patent, copyright and trade secrecy laws, such as the bar for and scope of protection as well as research exemptions, compulsory licensing regimes and misuse doctrines. It analyses what the allocation of tasks is and should be between these IP levers and antitrust rules, in particular the law on abuse of dominance (Article 102 TFEU) and monopolisation (Section 2 Sherman Act), while particular attention is paid to the essential facilities doctrine, including pricing methodologies for access to IP. Many recent decisions and judgments are put into a coherent analytical framework, such as IMS Health, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline (in the EU), Apple (France), Orange Book Standard (Germany), Trinko, Rambus, NYMEX, eBay (US), Microsoft and IBM/T3 (both EU and US). Further topics covered include: IP protection for software, interoperability information and databases; industry-specific tailoring of IP; antitrust innovation market analysis; and the WTO law on the IP/antitrust interface.