Antitrust & Competition/
Antitrust Enforcers' Stealth Undermining of Patent Rights – Shedding Light on a Recent and Troubling Phenomenon
Alden Abbott — 30 June 2014
In recent years, antitrust enforcers in Europe and the United States have made public pronouncements and pursued enforcement initiatives that undermine the ability of patentees to earn maximum profits through the unilateral exercise of rights within the scope of their patents, as discussed in separate recent articles by me and by Professor Nicolas Petit of the University of Liege. (Similar sorts of concerns have been raised by Federal Trade Commissioner Joshua Wright.) This represents a change in emphasis away from restraints on competition among purveyors of rival patented technologies and toward the alleged "exploitation" of a patentee's particular patented technology. It is manifested, for example, in enforcers' rising enthusiasm for limiting patent royalties (based on hypothetical ex ante comparisons to "next best" technologies, or the existence of standards on which patents "read"), for imposing compulsory licensing remedies, and for constraining the terms of private patent litigation settlements involving a single patented technology. (Not surprisingly, given its broader legal mandate to attack abuses of dominant positions, the European Commission has been more aggressive than United States antitrust agencies.) This development has troubling implications for long-term economic welfare and innovation, and merits far greater attention than it has received thus far.
What explains this phenomenon? Public enforcers are motivated by research that purports to demonstrate fundamental flaws in the workings of the patent system (including patent litigation) and the poor quality of many patents, as described, for example, in 2003 and 2011 U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Reports. Central to this scholarship is the notion that patents are "highly uncertain" and merely "probabilistic" (read "second class") property rights that should be deemed to convey only a right to try to exclude. This type of thinking justifies a greater role for prosecutors to "look inside" the patent "black box" and use antitrust to "correct" perceived patent "abuses," including supposed litigation excesses.
This perspective is problematic, to say the least. Government patent agencies, not antitrust enforcers, are best positioned to (and have taken steps to) rein in litigation excesses and improve patent quality, and the Supreme Court continues to issue rulings clarifying patent coverage. More fundamentally, as Professor Petit and I explain, this new patent-specific interventionist trend ignores a robust and growing law and economics literature that highlights the benefits of the patent system in enabling technology commercialization, signaling value to capital markets and innovators, and reducing information and transaction costs. It also fails to confront empirical studies that by and large suggest stronger patent regimes are associated with faster economic growth and innovation. Furthermore, decision theory and error cost considerations indicate that antitrust agencies are ill-equipped to second guess unilateral exercises of property rights that fall within the scope of a patent. Finally, other antitrust jurisdictions, such as China, are all too likely to cite new United States and European constraints on unilateral patent right assertions as justifications for even more intrusive limitations on patent rights.
What, then, should the U.S. antitrust enforcement agencies do? Ideally, they should announce that they are redirecting their emphasis to prosecuting inefficient competitive restraints involving rival patented technologies, the central thrust of the 1995 FTC-U.S. Justice Department Patent-Antitrust Licensing Guidelines. In so doing, they should state publicly that an individual patentee should be entitled to the full legitimate returns flowing from the legal scope of its patent, free from antitrust threat. (The creation of patent-specific market power through deception or fraud is not a legitimate return on patent rights, of course, and should be subject to antitrust prosecution when found.) One would hope that eventually the European Commission (and, dare we suggest, other antitrust authorities as well) would be inspired to adopt a similar program. Additional empirical research documenting the economy-wide benefits of encouraging robust unilateral patent assertions could prove helpful in this regard.
In Antitrust & Competition, China, Economic Theory, European Union, Federal Trade Commission, Intellectual Property, International, Justice Department, Law & Economics, Patent commercialization, decision theory, international competition, nicolas petit, settlements
Alden Abbott is a a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, focusing on antitrust issues. He previously served as the Federal Trade Commission's General Counsel from 2018 to early 2021.
One response to Antitrust Enforcers' Stealth Undermining of Patent Rights – Shedding Light on a Recent and Troubling Phenomenon
Fred Michaud 22 July 2014 at 8:25 am
Thank you for your thoughtful article. The knee-jerk anti patent rhetoric fails to account for the importance of patents in driving innovation and today's economic growth. The Apples and Googles of the world will wake up some day and wonder why they have destroyed the one remaining advantage they have in the world — their ability to protect their creative endeavors in a meaningful way.