IIPC workshop winners grant 2007

The IIPC (Innovation, Intellectual Property and Competition policy) Workshop is coming up shortly. Coming December 15, the papers written by the 2007 IIPC competition winners will be presented. One of these papers is "Federalism, substantive preemption, and limits on antitrust: an application to patent holdup", by Bruce H. Kobayashi and Joshua D. Wright (George Mason University). This paper examines whether considerations similar to the considerations in Credit Suisse v. Billing suggest restraint when applying the antitrust laws to conduct (in particular patent hold-up of members of standard-setting organizations) that is normally regulated by state and other federal laws. In Credit Suisse v. Billing, the Court held that the securities law implicitly precludes the application of the antitrust laws to the conduct alleged in that case. The Court considered several factors, including the availability and competence of other laws to regulate unwanted behaviour, and the potential that application of the antitrust laws would result in "unusually serious mistakes." While some have suggested that this conduct illustrates a gap in the current enforcement of antitrust laws, their analysis finds that such conduct would be better evaluated under the federal patent laws and state contract laws. Registration to the workshop is still open!