Sen. Mike Lee of Utah is poised to introduce legislation that would forbid Google and other tech giants that build and operate digital advertising exchanges from owning the tools that help buyers and sellers of online advertising. Not only is this bad policy, but it is based on the faulty premise that advertising markets are analogous to securities markets.

Read the full piece here.

Abstract

There is a raging debate within antitrust to determine how to best assess the conduct of digital platforms and tailor the enforcement of antitrust laws to the modern economy. The distinguishing features of digital platforms can make their analysis quite different from conventional, single-sided markets. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Ohio v. American Express (“Amex”) was the first decision to explicitly incorporate features of multisided platforms into antitrust analyses. However, the decision has divided academics and practitioners as to whether the Court properly incorporated platform features into antitrust’s rule of reason framework, which seeks to divide the burden of production between plaintiffs and defendants. Adding fuel to the fire are the lower courts’ interpretation of Amex, including in U.S. v. Sabre, where the district court ruled that only “transactional” platforms compete with other transactional platforms, which effectively short-circuited the competitive analysis. This Article argues that antitrust has forgotten the lessons from Ronald Coase’s work on the nature of the firm. Specifically, categorizing business organizations as “platforms” is insufficient to properly inform the actual competitive effects analysis. Firms organize in various ways to ultimately turn inputs into outputs. Precisely how this process is achieved is relevant to understand a firm’s conduct and incentives, but firm organization alone should not lead to competitive effects conclusions. In light of Coase, this Article reexamines the Court’s Amex decision to put suitable bounds on its precedential value. Additionally, this Article examines several key antitrust cases before and after Amex to assess their fidelity to a Coasian interpretation of platforms.

Introduction

The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) is grateful for the opportunity to submit these comments in support of FTX’s application to amend its DCO registration to allow it to clear margined products directly for retail participants.

The vast majority (some 96%[1]) of global crypto derivatives trading takes place outside the U.S., much of it on platforms operating non-intermediated retail models similar to that proposed in FTX’s application—but with one crucial difference: these offshore exchanges are largely unregulated. The reason for the disparity in domestic vs. foreign trading volumes is clear: regulatory constraints and costs in the U.S. make the operation of such platforms impossible or unviable. FTX’s proposal would pave the way to bring the technology and business models currently employed to facilitate virtually the entirety of the world’s crypto derivatives trading into the regulated structure of U.S. derivatives markets. The only thing standing in the way is the possible inflexibility of that regulatory structure in the face of disruptive competition.

The obvious market benefits of FTX’s proposal are that:

1. It would free capital that would otherwise be pledged as collateral, which could greatly expand liquidity in crypto markets or could be deployed elsewhere in the financial system;
2. It would introduce a competitive alternative to the current exchanges, thus providing investors savings on what they would otherwise pay in commissions, account origination fees, etc.; and
3. It would offer clear product differentiation: e.g., by introducing a new mechanism for counterparty risk mitigation and by offering direct access to retail investors (with inherently lower costs of participation, more and cheaper information, and technological enhancements like a direct-access mobile interface).

The latter two of these benefits (and to some extent even the first) go particularly to the enhancement of competition in U.S. derivatives markets.

Concerns that markets lack sufficient competition are at the forefront of current policy debates. Legislators are currently working on draft bills that seek to promote competition in digital markets, and President Biden recently issued an executive order advocating for a “whole of government” approach to competition.[2]

Unfortunately, the renewed focus on how governments may boost competition has a significant blindside when it comes to government-created barriers to competition. Rather than offering a solution, government regulations are all too often the cause of reduced competition. This is notably the case when regulation artificially narrows a market by preventing new and innovative firms from disrupting entrenched incumbents.

In other words, if the “whole-of-government” approach to promoting competition means anything, it means that regulatory agencies should work to remove state-created, artificial barriers to market entry that are not absolutely required to accomplish core regulatory functions. The CFTC has precisely that opportunity with FTX’s application.

The market for crypto (and many other) derivatives is currently a lucrative duopoly, dominated by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). Both firms have long been shielded from robust competition by a protective, if well-intentioned, moat of government regulation. The CFTC now has a unique opportunity to open this duopoly to disruptive competition.

FTX’s application would bring both technological and business-model innovation to the derivatives market, carrying with them the promise of increased competition, reduced risk, more efficient pricing, and lower costs for investors. There is always reluctance to embrace the new, particularly in areas that deal so intrinsically with risk. But a sensible measure of caution must not be allowed to morph into costly intransigence.

FTX’s application, while ambitious in its aims, is, in fact, quite modest in its mechanisms. It is respectful of the existing, overarching regulatory paradigm implemented to protect consumers, investors, and the financial system as a whole; it contemplates significant protections and backstops to shore up any increased risk it might introduce; and it ensures that ongoing oversight by the CFTC is readily facilitated.

Indeed, approval of FTX’s application would not entail the abandonment of the CFTC’s core principles, but merely a recognition that the specific implementation of those principles may not be optimal for certain novel business models and technology. As Chairman Benham recently remarked:

[T]he digital asset market would benefit from uniform imposition of requirements focused on ensuring certain core principles, including market integrity, customer protection, and market stability. At the CFTC, we have seen that a regulatory regime focused on core principles can be successful in overseeing a wide variety of markets, and have no reason to think those same principles cannot be applied to digital asset markets.[3]

In short, the CFTC should jump at this opportunity to introduce some well-regulated experimentation into the derivatives market: the likely social benefits of this effort significantly outweigh the potential harms.

Read the full comments here.

[1] See, e.g., Philip Stafford, Crypto industry makes push into regulated derivatives markets, FINANCIAL TIMES (Feb. 21, 2022), https://www.ft.com/content/364dee59-fb51-400b-acd2-808d4ec41ab3.

[2] Executive Order 14036 on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, § 2(g) (Jul. 9, 2021) https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/07/09/executive-order-on-promoting-competition- inthe-american-economy (“This order recognizes that a whole-of-government approach is necessary to address overconcentration, monopolization, and unfair competition in the American economy.”).

[3] CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam, Letter to the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and House Committee on Agriculture (Feb. 8, 2022) at 4, available at https://www.agriculture.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2022%2002%2008%20Ag%20committees%20digital%20asset%20res ponse%20letter.pdf.

Introduction

We thank the European Commission for this opportunity to comment on its call for evidence concerning a new framework for standard-essential patents. The International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center whose work promotes the use of law & economics methodologies to inform public-policy debates. We believe that intellectually rigorous, data-driven analysis will lead to efficient policy solutions that promote consumer welfare and global economic growth. ICLE’s scholars have written extensively on competition, intellectual property, and consumer-protection policy.

In this comment, we express concerns about the commission’s plan to update the legal framework that underpins standard-essential patent licensing in Europe.

For obvious reasons, the way intellectual property disputes are resolved has tremendous ramifications for firms that operate in standard-reliant industries. Not only do many of the firms in this space derive a large share of their revenue from patents but, perhaps more importantly, the prospect of litigation dictates how firms structure the transfer of intellectual property assets. In simple terms, ineffectual judicial remedies for IP infringements and uncertainty concerning the resolution of IP disputes discourage firms from concluding license agreements in the first place.

The key role that IP plays in these industries should impel policymakers to proceed with caution. By virtually all available metrics, the current system works. The development of innovative technologies through standards development organizations (SDOs) has led to the emergence of some of the most groundbreaking technologies that consumers use today;[1] and recent empirical evidence suggests that many of the alleged ills that have been associated with the overenforcement of intellectual property rights simply fail to materialize in industries that rely on standard-essential patents.[2]

At the same time, “there is no empirical evidence of structural and systematic problems of holdup and royalty stacking affecting standard-essential patent (“SEP”) licensing.”[3] Indeed, “[t]he notion that implementers in such innovation–driven industries are being suffocated by an insurmountable patent royalty stack has turned out to be nothing more than horror fiction.”[4] Yet, without a sound basis, the anti-injunctions approach increasingly espoused by policymakers unnecessarily “adds a layer of additional legal complexity and alters bargaining processes, unduly favoring implementers.”[5]

Licensing negotiations involving complex technologies are legally intricate. It is simply not helpful for a regulatory body to impose a particular vision of licensing negotiations if the goal is more innovation and greater ultimate returns to consumers. Instead, where possible, policy should prefer allowing parties to negotiate at arm’s length and to resolve disputes through courts. In addition to maintaining the sometimes-necessary remedy of injunctive relief against bad-faith implementers, this approach allows courts to explore when injunctive relief is appropriate on a case-by-case basis. Thus, over the course of examining actual cases, courts can refine the standards that determine when an injunctive remedy is inappropriate. Indeed, the very exercise of designing ex ante rules and guidelines to inform F/RAND licensing is antagonistic to optimal policymaking, as judges are far better situated and equipped to make the necessary marginal adjustments to the system.

Against this backdrop, our comments highlight several factors that should counsel the commission to preserve the rules that currently govern SEP-licensing agreements:

For a start, the SEP space is far more complex than many recognize. Critics often assume that collaborative standard development creates significant scope for opportunistic behavior—notably patent holdup. However, the tremendous growth of SEP-reliant industries and market participants’ strong preference for this form of technological development suggest these problems are nowhere near as widespread as many believe.

Second, weakening the protections afforded to SEP holders would have second-order effects that are widely ignored in contemporary policy debates. Weaker SEP protection would notably encourage firms to integrate vertically, rather than to specialize. It would reduce startup companies’ access to capital markets by making it harder to collateralize IP. Curbing existing IP protections would also erode the West’s technological leadership over economies that are heavily reliant on manufacturing and whose policymakers routinely undermine the intellectual property rights of foreign firms.

Finally, critics often overlook the important benefits conferred by existing IP protections. This includes the comparative advantage of injunctions over damages awards, as well as firms’ ability to decide at what level of the value chain royalties will be calculated.

Read the full comments here.

[1] See, e.g., Dirk Auer & Julian Morris, Governing the Patent Commons, 38 CARDOZO ARTS & ENT. L.J. 294 (2020).

[2] See, e.g., Alexander Galetovic, Stephen Haber & Ross Levine, An Empirical Examination of Patent Holdup, 11 J. COMPETITION & ECON. 549 (2015). This is in keeping with general observations about the dynamic nature of intellectual property protections. See, e.g., RONALD A. CASS & KEITH N. HYLTON, LAWS OF CREATION: PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE WORLD OF IDEAS 42-44 (2013).

[3] Oscar Borgogno & Giuseppe Colangelo, Disentangling the FRAND Conundrum, DEEP-IN Research Paper (Dec. 5, 2019) at 5, available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=3498995.

[4] Richard A. Epstein & Kayvan B. Noroozi, Why Incentives for “Patent Holdout” Threaten to Dismantle FRAND, and Why It Matters, 32 BERKELEY TECH. L.J. 1381, 1411 (2017).

[5] Borgogno & Colangelo, supra note 3, at 5.

 

Abstract

For much of its existence, the academic and policy debate on standards essential patents (SEPs) in mobile telecommunications was driven by the theory of “hold up”— the ability of SEP owners to supposedly extract value well beyond the contribution of their technology to downstream products. This theory of hold up was never empirically validated, and even as a theory, took no account of the non-self-enforcing nature of patents, including SEPs. Injunctive relief for infringement is far from automatic, and litigation is costly and carries asymmetric risks for licensors. In reality, licensors are often able to collect payment only several years after infringement began, may sometimes end up agreeing to rates that are too low to incentivise future investment, and may often be unable to collect payment for all the period of infringement by the implementer. Thus “hold out” by licensees who wish to delay, avoid and reduce payment for their use of SEPs is a potentially greater danger than “hold up.”

If injunctions are difficult to obtain and the eventual remedy for infringement is to take a license and pay damages based on FRAND rates, there is little positive incentive for licensees to take licenses. Instead, it is attractive for licensees to delay and force licensors into litigation. The attractiveness and increasing pervasiveness of such behaviour risks disrupting the “balance” of incentives that is sought by standards development organisations such as the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which has been responsible for shepherding the development of mobile telecommunications standards. The long-term consequences of disrupting this balance will likely be a diminished rate of future innovation, and the potential replacement of a remarkably successful model of “open innovation” by more closed models.

This paper suggests potential correctives to the holdout problem. The correctives involve the strengthening of injunctive relief regimes, and the recognition by Courts and policy-makers (especially antitrust or competition agencies) that achieving the “balance” sought out by ETSI may require limiting or withdrawing the unlimited availability of FRAND licenses for unwilling licensors. Courts and agencies should recognise that SEP holders are only obliged to be prepared to make FRAND licenses available, but also recognise that licensors are not compelled to conclude FRAND licenses with unwilling licensees. At the very least, Courts that are often asked to determine FRAND rates based on evaluating “comparable licenses” can still take measures that avoid putting unwilling licensees on the same footing as those who willingly negotiated “comparable” licenses.

These days, there isn’t a lot of harmony in the world of technology policy. But there is a bright spot of bipartisanship in a section of our airwaves: the 5.9 GHz band. In 2020, the FCC voted unanimously to modernize the rules in this spectrum to allow both Wi-Fi and automotive safety tech to operate. This win-win was celebrated by proponents of car safety and broadband alike. But today the Department of Transportation (DOT) is working on a study that may purposely have been designed to undo this decision. At a time when broadband is more important than ever, we should not undo this popular and bipartisan policy.

Read the full piece here.

Abstract

Between 2016 and 2019, two proposed mergers captured much of the attention and resources of the Department of Justice, Antitrust Division (DOJ). The first was the vertical merger of AT&T Inc. and Time Warner Inc.—a merger of a communications, media, and content distribution company (AT&T) with a content provider (Time Warner). The second was the horizontal merger of Sprint and T-Mobile—a merger of two mobile telephone companies. In general, vertical mergers are reviewed with greater leniency than horizontal mergers because the latter, by definition, eliminate a competitor in the relevant marketplace, which is not a concern with the former. Moreover, merger-specific efficiencies may be easier to demonstrate when a company merges with another company in its own supply chain. Even so, the DOJ challenged the vertical merger of AT&T and Time Warner but permitted (with conditions) the horizontal merger of Sprint and T-Mobile. As this Article sets forth, these seemingly distinct mergers were destined to be linked.

Even though the DOJ unsuccessfully blocked the AT&T-Time Warner merger, the companies are separating again only a few short years after finalizing their merger. The stated reason for the unwinding is arguably linked to the DOJ’s decision to permit the Sprint-T-Mobile merger. The competitive pressure created by the joined mobile telephone company—T-Mobile—has pressured AT&T to invest further in its own mobile telephone business. In other words, the DOJ’s initial fear, that the merged AT&T could use theoretical market power to anticompetitively charge higher consumer prices and raise rivals’ costs in content distribution, was never realized. In contrast, the DOJ’s humility in assessing potential efficiencies for a merged T-Mobile in the growing 5G mobile telephone market is already paying competitive dividends. The tale of these two mergers, therefore, provides interesting insights into modern merger review policies.

Abstract

This paper looks at consumer complaints about student loan lenders and servicers from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB’s) consumer complaint database. Using a novel dataset drawn from 30,678 complaints filed against 212 student loan companies, we analyze consumers’ subjective views about whether traditional or fintech student loan lenders and servicers provide a better customer experience. Overall, we find that consumers initiate far fewer complaints against fintech lenders than traditional lenders. But we find that fintech lenders are twenty-eight times more likely than traditional lenders to receive complaints for making confusing or misleading advertisements. Our data also show that complaints against fintech lenders or servicers have not risen in parallel with greater loan volume by those firms, despite the rising number of complaints being filed against traditional lenders and servicers, as those firms continue to dominate the market share of student loan lending and servicing. We consider various reasons for this difference, including whether this means fintech student loan companies are providing a better consumer experience.

Abstract

We propose bolstering the OPT program rather than undermining the United States’ edge in the global race for talent. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), within its statutory authority, should introduce the following reforms to the OPT program:

Increase eligible years of work for non–science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (non-STEM) graduates on OPT from one year to three years. Remove employer sponsorship requirements. Allow foreign graduates to work in industries unrelated to their field of study. Eliminate minimum-working-hour requirements for employment authorization. Streamline the I-765 issuance process to ensure that foreign graduates can obtain Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) within three months or less. Exempt OPT participants from the H-1B lottery process if they have acquired at least one year of work experience.

This brief will summarize extant evidence to support this proposal.