Excerpt

You may not know much about the most important agency in Washington when it comes to regulating new technologies. Founded 99 years ago today, the Federal Trade Commission has become, for better or worse, the Federal Technology Commission.

The FTC oversees nearly every company in America. It polices competition by enforcing the antitrust laws. It tries to protect consumers by punishing deception and practices it deems “unfair.” It’s the general enforcer of corporate promises. It’s the de facto regulator of the media, from traditional advertising to Internet search and social networks. It handles novel problems of privacy, data security, online child protection, and patent claims, among others. Even Net neutrality may soon wind up in the FTC’s jurisdiction if the Federal Communications Commission’s rules are struck down in court.

But how should the FTC regulate technology? What’s the right mix of the certainty businesses need and the flexibility technological progress demands?

There are essentially three models: regulatory, discretionary and evolutionary.

The epitome of traditional regulatory model is the FTC’s chief rival: the FCC. The 1996 Telecom Act runs nearly 47,000 words — 65 times longer than the Sherman Act of 1890, the primary antitrust law enforced by the FTC. The FCC writes tech-specific before technology has even developed. Virginia Postrel described the mentality best in The Future and Its Enemies:

Technocrats are “for the future,” but only if someone is in charge of making it turn out according to plan. They greet every new idea with a “yes, but,” followed by legislation, regulation, and litigation…. By design, technocrats pick winners, establish standards, and impose a single set of values on the future. 

The less technocratic alternative is the evolutionary model: build flexible law that evolves alongside technology. Learn from, and adapt to, the ever-changing technological and business environments.

On antitrust, that’s essentially what the FTC (along with the Department of Justice) does today. Judicial decisions are firmly grounded in economics, and this feeds back into the agencies’ enforcement actions. Antitrust law has become nearly synonymous with antitrust economics: both courts and agencies weigh the perils of both under- and over-enforcement in the face of unavoidable uncertainty about the future.

But much of what the FTC does falls into the discretionary model, unmoored from both sound economics and judicial oversight. The discretionary and evolutionary models share a similar legal basis and so are often confused, but they’re profoundly different: The discretionary model harms technological progress and undermines the rule of law, while the evolutionary model promotes both.

Continue reading on Tech Dirt

Commissioner Wright makes a powerful and important case in dissenting from the FTC’s 2-1 (Commissioner Ohlhausen was recused from the matter) decision imposing conditions on Nielsen’s acquisition of Arbitron.

Read the full piece here.

We’ll be delving into today’s oral arguments at our live-streamed TechFreedom/ICLE event at 12:30 EDT — and tweeting on the #NetNeutrality hashtag.

But here are a few thoughts to help guide the frantic tea-leaf reading everyone will doubtless be engaged in after (and probably even during) the arguments

Read the full piece here.

With thanks to Geoff and everyone else, it’s great to join the cast here at TOTM. Geoff gave a nice introduction, so I won’t use this first post to further that purpose – especially when I have substance to discuss. The only prefatory words I’ll offer are that my work lies at the intersection of law and technology, with a focus on telecommunications and the regulation of technology. Most of my posts here will likely relate to those subjects. But I may occasionally use this forum to write briefly on topics further afield of my research agenda (and to which I therefore cannot dedicate more than blog-post-length musings to develop).

Read the full piece here.

Summary

This article assesses the FCC’s current policies and rules regarding transaction reviews, concluding that the Commission’s current spectrum transfer review process harms consumer welfare. In particular, the FCC’s spectrum screen as currently structured, its standard of review for spectrum transfers, its use of conditions, as well as the scope of its transaction reviews exceed legal limits, impede efficient markets for spectrum, and deter welfare-increasing transactions and investment.

First we explain the FCC’s current policies and decisions regarding transaction reviews and assess their appropriateness with respect to the Commission’s authorizing legislation, regulations and case law. With respect to the scope of its transaction reviews and its use of conditions in particular, we find that the FCC’s practices exceed their permissible limits.

Next we address the economics of the FCC’s policies and decisions, explaining and assessing the animating economic logic behind the FCC’s actions. We demonstrate that the FCC’s current spectrum screen and transaction review standards rest on the premise that spectrum concentration in markets inherently leads to anticompetitive behavior. Further, we explain the flaws in this premise.

In demonstrating and assessing the basis of the FCC’s transaction reviews, we discuss the particulars of the FCC’s spectrum screen in detail, focusing on its use of concentration metrics and claims that its full analysis (beyond the initial screen) investigates competitive conditions more broadly. As we discuss, the Commission uses HHIs and spectrum concentration measures improperly as de facto triggers for per se illegality, rather than triggers for further investigation. Further, none of the full analyses described by the Commission investigates an aspect of competition other than market or spectrum concentration; instead, they simply restate in more detail the structural analysis implied by the HHI test and spectrum screen.

Addressing the economics underlying the FCC’s actions, we demonstrate that both economic theory and evidence indicate that the presence of more competitors in telecommunications markets does not necessarily result in lower prices and better service for consumers. Particularly in industries (like wireless) that are characterized by rapid technological change, non-horizontal competitive constraints and shifting consumer demand, the threat of entry and the need for repeated contracts with input providers with market power operate to constrain strategic behavior, even in heavily concentrated markets.

The welfare effects of spectrum concentration are at worst ambiguous, and, as we demonstrate, as the market has grown more concentrated, investment, coverage and product diversity have increased while prices for consumers have decreased. These results are consistent with a more robust model of firm behavior in the industry that takes account of entry threats and technological change.

Next we undertake a detailed critique of the FCC staff’s analysis of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, demonstrating that it exhibits the same flaws as the agency’s more cursory transaction reviews.

We conclude with a discussion of the policy implications and suggestions for reform.

 

[Cross posted at The Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property]

In a prior blog posting, I reported how reports of a so-called “patent litigation explosion” today are just wrong.  As I detailed in another blog posting, the percentage of patent lawsuits today are not only consistent with historical patent litigation rates in the nineteenth century, there is actually less litigation today than during some decades in the early nineteenth century. Between 1840 and 1849, for instance, patent litigation rates were 3.6% — more than twice the patent litigation rate today.

(As an aside, we have to hold constant for issued patents in computing litigation percentage rates because more patents are issued now per year than twice the total population of New York City (NYC) in 1820 — 253,315 patents issued in 2012 compared to 123,706 residents in NYC in 1820.  Yet before someone says that this just means we have too many patents today, as Judge Posner blithely asserts without any empirical evidence, one must also recognize that the NYC population in 2013 is 8.3 million, which is far beyond merely double its 1820 population — NYC’s population has grown by a factor of 67!  A simple comparison to population growth, especially taking into account the explosive growth in the innovation industries in the past several decades, could as easily justify the claim that we haven’t got enough patents issuing today.)

Unfortunately, the mythical claims about a “patent litigation explosion” have shifted in recent months (perhaps because the original assertion was untenable).  Now the assertion is that there has been an “explosion” in lawsuits brought by patent licensing companies.  I’ll note for the record here that patent licensing companies are often referred to today by the undefined and nonobjective rhetorical epithet of “patent troll.”  In a recent study of patent licensing companies that exposes many of the unsound and unproven claims about these much-maligned companies – such as that patents owned by these companies are of lower quality than those owned by manufacturing entities – Stephen Moore first explained that the “troll” slur is used today by academics, commentators and the public alike “without a universally accepted definition.” So, let’s dispense with nonobjective rhetoric and simply identify these companies factually by their business models: patent licensing.

As with all discriminatory slurs, it’s unsurprising that this new claim about an alleged “explosion” in so-called “patent troll” lawsuits is unproven rubbish.  Similar to the myth about patent litigation generally, this is just another example of overwrought and empirically unsound rhetoric being used to push a policy agenda in Congress and regulatory agencies. (Six bills have been on the Hill so far this year, and FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez has announced that the FTC intends to begin a formal § 6(b) investigation of patent licensing companies).

How do we know that patent licensing companies are not the sole driver of any increases in patent litigation?  Contrary to the much-hyped claim today that patent licensing companies are the primary cause of most patent lawsuits in district courts in 2012, other serious and more careful reviews of the litigation data have shown that the primary culprit is not patent licensing companies, but rather the America Invents Act of 2011(“AIA”). The AIA created numerous new administrative proceedings for invalidating patents at the Patent & Trademark Office, which created additional incentives to file lawsuits in certain contexts.  Moreover, the AIA expressly prohibited joinder of multiple defendants in single lawsuits.  Both of these significant changes to the patent system has produced the entirely logical and expected result of more lawsuits being filed after the AIA’s statutory provisions went into effect in 2011 and 2012. In basic statistics terms, the effect of these statutory provisions in any study of patent litigation rates that does not take them into account is referred to as a “confounding variable.”

Even more important, when the data used in one of the most-referenced studies asserting a patent litigation explosion by patent licensing companies was tested by a highly respected scholar who specializes in statistical and empirical analyses of the patent system, he reported that he found no statistically significant results. (See Dave Schwartz’s testimony at the DOJ-FTC Workshop (Dec. 10, 2012), starting at approximately 1:58 at this video. Transcript available here.)  At least the scholars of this disputed study made their data available for confirmation, according to basic scientific norms. Other prominently cited studies on patent licensing companies have relied on secret data from companies like RPX, Patent Freedom, and other firms who have a very large dog in the litigation and policy fight, and thus this data has all of the trappings of being unreliable and biased (see here and here)

The important role that the AIA is playing in increasing patent lawsuits by patent licensing companies is ironic if only because the people misreporting the patent litigation data are the same people who were big proponents of the AIA (some of them even attended the AIA’s signing ceremony with President Obama in September 2011).  Among non-patent scholars, this is called trying to have your cake and eat it, too.  Usually such efforts fail, especially when children always try to get away with this logical fallacy.  It shows the depths to which the patent policy debates have sunk that the press, Congress, the President and many others don’t seem to care about this one bit and instead are pushing ahead and repeating – and even drafting legislation based upon – bad “statistics” with serious methodological problems and compiled from secret, unreliable data.

With Congress rushing headlong to enact legislation that discriminates against patent licensing companies, it’s time to step back and start asking serious questions before the legal system that makes possible the innovation industries is changed and we discover too late that it’s for the worse.  It’s time to set aside rhetoric and made-up “statistics” based on secret data and to ask whether there really is a systemic problem.  It’s also time to start asking serious questions about why these myths were created in the first place, what does the raw data actually say, who is providing the data and funding these “troll” studies, and who is pushing this rhetoric into the public policy debates to the point that it has become a deafening roar that makes impossible all reasonable and sensible discussion.

[NOTE: minor grammatical and style changes were made after the initial posting]

Filed under: antitrust, federal trade commission, intellectual property, litigation, patent Tagged: ftc, non practicing entity, patent assertion entity, patent litigation, patent litigation explosion, patent troll, section 6(b)

I’d like to thank Geoff and Thom for organizing this symposium and creating a forum for an open and frank exchange of ideas about the FTC’s unfair methods of competition authority under Section 5.  In offering my own views in a concrete proposed Policy Statement and speech earlier this summer, I hoped to encourage just such a discussion about how the Commission can define its authority to prosecute unfair methods of competition in a way that both strengthens the agency’s ability to target anticompetitive conduct and provides much needed guidance to the business community.  During the course of this symposium, I have enjoyed reading the many thoughtful posts providing feedback on my specific proposal, as well as offering other views on how guidance and limits can be imposed on the Commission’s unfair methods of competition authority.  Through this marketplace of ideas, I believe the Commission can develop a consensus position and finally accomplish the long overdue task of articulating its views on the application of the agency’s signature competition statute.  As this symposium comes to a close, I’d like to make a couple quick observations and respond to a few specific comments about my proposal.

Read the full piece here. 

Regulating the Regulators: Guidance for the FTC’s Section 5 Unfair Methods of Competition Authority

August 1, 2013

Truthonthemarket.com

We’ve had a great day considering the possibility, and potential contours, of guidelines for implementing the FTC’s “unfair methods of competition” (UMC) authority.  Many thanks to our invited participants and to TOTM readers who took the time to follow today’s posts.  There’s lots of great stuff here, so be sure to read anything you missed.  And please continue to comment on posts.  A great thing about a blog symposium is that the discussion need not end immediately.  We hope to continue the conversation over the next few days.

I’m tempted to make some observations about general themes, points of (near) consensus, open questions, etc., but I won’t do that because we’re not quite finished.  We’re expecting to receive an additional post or two tomorrow, and to hear a response from Commissioner Josh Wright.  We hope you’ll join us tomorrow for final posts and Commissioner Wright’s response.

Here are links to the posts so far:

• David Balto, Law Offices of David Balto:  Some Quick Observations on the Drive for UMC Policy Guidelines and Economic Evidence and Section 5
• Terry Calvani & Angela Diveley, Freshfields:  Injury to Competition and Efficiencies in Section 5 Claims
• James Cooper, GMU Law & Economics Center:  The Limits of Section 5’s Scope Beyond the Sherman Act and A Sensible Limit to the FTC’s Section 5 Authority
• Dan Crane, Michigan Law:  Section 5 and Principles of Self-Restraint
• Gus Hurwitz, Nebraska Law:  The Application of Chevron to Section 5 and A Policy Statement Is Not Enough
• Thom Lambert, Missouri Law:  Guidelines for the FTC’s UMC Authority: What’s Clear and What’s Not?
• Marina Lao, Seton Hall Law:  The FTC’s Unfair Methods of Competition Authority
• Geoffrey Manne, Lewis & Clark Law/ICLE:  The Importance of Sensible Guidance for UMC Enforcement
• Joe Sims, Jones Day:  First Principles of Section 5 Authority
• Tim Wu, Columbia Law:  Section 5 Guidelines Would Make the FTC Stronger and Better

Filed under: announcements, antitrust, federal trade commission, section 5 Tagged: Competition law, Efficiencies, Federal Trade Commission, ftc, Harm to Competition, UMC