Corporate & Securities Law

Section 2 Sympoisum: Welcome to the Final Day

Geoffrey Manne is Director, Global Public Policy at LECG and a Lecturer in Law at Lewis & Clark Law School. He is a founder of Truth on the Market.

Josh Wright is Assistant Professor at George Mason University School of Law and a former Scholar in Residence at the FTC. He blogs regularly at Truth on the Market.

Welcome to the third and final day of the TOTM Symposium on Section 2 and the Section 2 Report.

Yesterday we had a great series of posts discussing the difficult question of whether Section 2 should be governed by a general standard or rather by conduct-specific standards, as well as the merits of the Section 2 Report’s endorsement of the “substantial disproportionality” test. For convenience, yesterday’s posts are linked here:

• Thom Lambert (University of Missouri/TOTM) on Defining and Identifying Exclusionary Conduct
• Bill Kolasky (WilmerHale) on a Stepwise Rule of Reason for Exclusionary Conduct
• Keith Hylton (Boston University) on The Error Cost Approach and the Case for ?Substantial Disproportionality
• Michael Salinger (Boston University/LECG) on Error Costs and the Case for Conduct-Specific Standards
• Bill Page (University of Florida) on Microsoft and the DOJ?s General Standards of Exclusion
• Bruce Kobayashi (George Mason University) on Are Administrable Bright Line Rules Underutilized in Section 2 Analyses?

Today we’ll turn our attention from the debate over general standards to more specific substantive issues throughout the Report ranging from the Report’s proposed treatment of practices like predatory pricing, bundled discounts and exclusive dealing to issues including defining monopoly power, crafting effective monopolization remedies, the intersection of monopolization law and intellectual property, and the implications of the Section 2 Report for international antitrust.  Today we’ll hear from (in some cases more than once):

• Bruce Kobayashi (George Mason) on predatory pricing
• Herbert Hovenkamp (Iowa Law) on predatory pricing and bundled discounts
• Thom Lambert (Missouri Law) on bundled discounts
• Dan Crane (Cardozo/Michigan) on bundled discounts
• Howard Marvel (Ohio State) on exclusive dealing
• Josh Wright (George Mason) on exclusive dealing and loyalty discounts
• Tim Brennan (UMBC) on distinguishing predation from exclusion
• Bill Kolasky (WilmerHale) on monopoly power
• Herbert Hovenkamp (Iowa Law) on patents and exclusionary conduct
• Tim Brennan (UMBC) on the relationship between regulation and antitrust
• Bill Page (Florida) on monopolization remedies
• Alden Abbott (FTC) provides an international perspective on single firm conduct

We’re looking forward to hearing from the participants, and hope you’ll join in the comments.

Full post as published by Truth on the Market on May 06, 2009 (boomark / email).