Damages, Deterrence, and Antitrust—A Comment on Cooter

Melamed offers a comment on Robert D. Cooter\u27s article on punitive damages. Melamed relates the concept of antitrust to Cooter\u27s valuable insights

Brief of Amici Curiae Law and Economics Scholars in Support of Appellee and Affirmance

In reliance on Qualcomm’s FRAND promises, key SSOs incorporated its technologies into wireless standards. Qualcomm takes the position that its patented technologies are essential to those standards and, therefore, that any firm making or selling a standard-compliant product infringes its patents. As a result, the SSOs’ incorporation of Qualcomm’s patented technologies into wireless standards created a huge market for licenses to Qualcomm’s SEPs.The district court held that Qualcomm used its chipset monopolies, not only to extract the high chip-set prices to which it was entitled, but also to perpetuate those monopolies by disadvantaging rival chip-makers and raising entry barriers. As a matter of law and economics, that holding is sound. At its core, this is yet another in a long line of cases dating back to the Supreme Court’s decision in Standard Oil of New Jersey v. United States and United States v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co. in which a monopolist violates the antitrust laws by using its market power to exclude rivals and entrench its monopoly.We address Qualcomm’s exclusionary conduct in two Parts. Part I explains why Qualcomm’s no license, no chips policy is unlawful under well-established antitrust principles. Part II discusses Qualcomm’s refusal to license chip-set rivals, which reinforces the no license, no chips policy and violates the antitrust laws

How Antitrust Law Can Make FRAND Commitments More Effective

Much attention has been paid in recent years to legal issues arising from standard setting, assertion of standard-essential patents, and the requirements imposed by standard-setting organizations that standard-essential patents be licensed on reasonable terms. This Feature argues that a fundamental aspect of the antitrust laws, heretofore overlooked in this context, can play an important role in ensuring that the rules established by standard-setting organizations are effective in preventing owners of standard-essential patents from engaging in patent holdup. It has long been a basic principle of antitrust law that when firms collaborate to engage in conduct that has efficiency benefits, like standard-setting, they violate the antitrust laws if their collaboration also harms competition more than necessary to obtain the efficiency benefits. Both standard-setting organizations and their members can violate Section of the Sherman Act if the organization\u27s rules are ineffective in preventing owners of standard-essential patents from exploiting the monopoly power they gain as a result of the standard

Burden of Production in Merger Cases Litigating Divestiture Fixes: Amicus Brief

In this amicus brief to the D.C. District Court judge, Amy Berman Jackson, in the U.S. v Assa Abloy, we explain the legal and policy rationales for courts to place the burden of on the merging parties to produce sufficient evidence that the divestiture will preserve competition to rebut the anticompetitive structural presumption based on the market shares of the unremedied merger that was reported to the agencies in the Hart-Scott-Rodino filing

Antitrust and Competition Law Update: Agencies Send a Strong Message on HSR Filing

The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division last week each announced enforcement actions against and settlements with parties that alleged failed to make required notifications of transactions under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended. Each case resulted in a significant fine (one of $800,000 and one of$1 million) and signaled the agencies’ intent to pursue vigorously parties that fail -- intentionally or negligently -- to meet their obligations under the HSR Act. Moreover, both cases address the scope of the HSR Act’s “investment only” exemption and show that the agencies construe it strictly to apply only when the acquiror’s interest and intent concerning the acquired firm is truly passive. Finally, these cases serve as a reminder that the Act’s filing requirements apply not only to purchases of an entire company or all of its assets, but also to any purchase of voting securities so long as certain thresholds are met -- whether or not the purchaser obtains any significant percentage ownershi

A Cortical Attractor Network with Martinotti Cells Driven by Facilitating Synapses

The population of pyramidal cells significantly outnumbers the inhibitory interneurons in the neocortex, while at the same time the diversity of interneuron types is much more pronounced. One acknowledged key role of inhibition is to control the rate and patterning of pyramidal cell firing via negative feedback, but most likely the diversity of inhibitory pathways is matched by a corresponding diversity of functional roles. An important distinguishing feature of cortical interneurons is the variability of the short-term plasticity properties of synapses received from pyramidal cells. The Martinotti cell type has recently come under scrutiny due to the distinctly facilitating nature of the synapses they receive from pyramidal cells. This distinguishes these neurons from basket cells and other inhibitory interneurons typically targeted by depressing synapses. A key aspect of the work reported here has been to pinpoint the role of this variability. We first set out to reproduce quantitatively based on in vitro data the di-synaptic inhibitory microcircuit connecting two pyramidal cells via one or a few Martinotti cells. In a second step, we embedded this microcircuit in a previously developed attractor memory network model of neocortical layers 2/3. This model network demonstrated that basket cells with their characteristic depressing synapses are the first to discharge when the network enters an attractor state and that Martinotti cells respond with a delay, thereby shifting the excitation-inhibition balance and acting to terminate the attractor state. A parameter sensitivity analysis suggested that Martinotti cells might, in fact, play a dominant role in setting the attractor dwell time and thus cortical speed of processing, with cellular adaptation and synaptic depression having a less prominent role than previously thought

Lifestyle and Other Factors Explain One-Half of the Variability in the Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Response to Cholecalciferol Supplementation in Healthy Adults

Background: Many factors have been associated with serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations in observational studies, with variable consistency. However, less information is available on factors affecting the magnitude of changes in serum 25(OH)D resulting from vitamin D supplementation