Can Antitrust Law Stop Abuses Of Intellectual Property And Free Access To Knowledge?
from the it-would-be-a-start... dept
A year ago, at the Congressional Internet Caucus' State of the Net West event, I was pleasantly surprised to hear Rep. Zoe Lofgren make the suggestion that an area that antitrust regulators should really be looking at is how copyright law is abused for anti-competitive reasons. Now, Glyn Moody points us to a new paper from Sean Flynn (who's been active in trying to get ACTA negotiators to answer questions) about how antitrust laws could be useful in stopping abuses of intellectual property law and improving access to knowledge. I'm not convinced this will actually work, but it's an interesting area that seems worth exploring.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: antitrust, intellectual property
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anti-competitive
http://ninapaley.com/mimiandeunice/archives/rivalrous-vs-non-rivalrous/492
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Re: anti-competitive
Copyright is a monopoly.
If you don't want such anti-competitive commercial privileges then abolish them. Don't be so stupid as to quibble between 'fairly anti-competitive' and 'unfairly anti-competitive'.
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Competition Law vs. IP
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No, anti trust laws are designed to be abused in favor of petitioners who bribe the government (with campaign contributions) and want competitors (ie: Google) eliminated.
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Re:
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Re:
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Antitrust Law
Control over IP is often abused to leverage other aspects, such as refusal to supply. Which can be illegal.
Microsoft were convicted in Europe, regardless of ownership of copyright, because they used their control over the desktop to restrict interoperability with other opereating systems.
Complainant was Sun Microsystems.
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The penalty when such a violation is established? Invalidation of a patent or a copyright is on the "remedy table".
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Re:
But that may be starting to change.
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Re: Re:
Every licensing agreement I have ever prepared is vetted against antitrust law to ensure compliance. The same can be said of tax law, export control law, etc. because all of them potentially impact the agreement and must be considered lest the client receive in the future a most unpleasant surprise and the lawyer the same (malpractice).
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Re: hello Dear,
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