We should not return to an era when rivals were able to make strategic and unprincipled use of antitrust doctrine to demand special treatment to save themselves from the brutal consequences of competitive failure. America should not let antitrust itself become anticompetitive.
The year 2016 was momentous in politics and celebrity deaths, but also in the field of technology law. Here’s our wrap-up of the five most significant tech cases that hit the judiciary in the past year.
It’s been a few years since the district court’s judgment in the landmark Microsoft monopolization case. Brian, Bill and I were all just a tad younger in 2000, don’t you think?
The Ninth Circuit confirmed my prediction by tossing one of the private antitrust class actions against Apple, which had challenged the lawfulness of the proprietary DRM technology Apple initially used for downloadable digital music.
FairSearch.org is in denial. That is why its proposals should be rejected by antitrust enforcement authorities worldwide. Nothing distills the difference between the European and American approaches to competition law as much as this trend-setting investigation.
No one can say with any seriousness that Google has captured a large share of Web search, and search advertising, with anything other than smarter software writers and more refined product developers. It simply built a better mousetrap. The EU’s challenge is that reality does not support the amorphous and transparently biased charges leveled against Google by rivals who have been unable to top it in the marketplace.
The story of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 this year is how the Supreme Court can sometimes see a legal issue so clearly despite confusion and conflicts among the lower federal courts.
Google doesn’t act like a monopolist and shares none of the characteristics sheltering classic monopolists from competition. Its astounding success in Internet search is universally regarded as a consequence of better design, superior code, better products and plain old hard work. Like Lewis Carroll’s other queen, the Queen of Hearts, Google really has no power at all.
According to the New York Times, Texas attorney general Greg Abbott has launched an antitrust investigation of Google, based on the concept that deviations from “search neutrality” are anticompetitive and unlawful. Texas Attorney General Investigates Google Search | NYTimes.com. The examination involves the fairness of Google search results, a concept called search neutrality. Some companies worry Google […]
Most observers believe the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits copying of DVDs, even for backup purposes. Now Real Networks is challenging that conventional wisdom in California.