Recent developments in US competition law and IP rights

Taught by
Professor Herbert Hovenkamp,
James G. Dinan University Professor, Penn Law School and Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania

About the Course

This one day course will be divided into two sessions. Students may register for either the morning session, the afternoon session, or both.

Recent Developments in US Competition Law

Morning – 09:00 to 13:00

US Competition Law and IP Rights

Afternoon = 13:15 to 19:00

The morning session will be devoted to recent developments across several areas of United States antitrust law, including:

• monopolization (abuse of dominance);
• anticompetitive pricing and discounting practices;
• predatory product innovation;
• cartels and joint ventures;
• vertical restraints; and
• antitrust federalism.

Some attention will also be given to recent debates about the “new structuralism,” considering whether competition law should pursue industries simply because they are dominated by too few firms, or the firms within them have become too large.

The afternoon session will be devoted to the interaction between competition law and intellectual property rights, focusing mainly on U.S. law. In the modern knowledge economy undertakings develop a number of strategies to expand their IP rights portfolio and achieve competitive advantages by employing their IP rights in order to exclude competitors or raise their costs, and charge higher prices to consumers. Competition law and IP law disputes are interconnected, as recent litigation in the pharmaceutical sector and the recent patent wars in the IT sector illustrate. Particular topics to be covered will include:

• exclusionary practices involving patents, and particularly unpracticed patents;
• patent ties and related practices;
• recent developments in the law of patent and copyright exhaustion (first sale doctrine);
• antitrust in the pharmaceutical sector, including pay-for-delay settlements and product-hopping

Readings will consist mainly of judicial decisions from United States federal courts, plus a small amount of secondary material.

Course Schedule

Morning Session:
08:30 Registration
09:00 Course begins
11:00 Break
11:15 Course resumes
13:15 Course ends for morning participants only / Lunch for Full day participants

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Afternoon Session:
13:15 Lunch for full day and afternoon participants
14:00 Afternoon course starts
16:00 break
16:15 Course resumes
17:45 Break
18:00 Course resumes
19:00 Course ends

About Herbert Hovenkamp

Professor Herbert Hovenkamp is currently the James G. Dinan University Professor, Penn Law School and Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania. Professor Hovenkamp has taught Antitrust, Antitrust & Economics, Law in American History, Torts, IP Survey, Introduction to Intellectual Property, and Real Property. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been the Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, Harvard Law School; Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, Harvard Law School; Faculty Scholar, University of Iowa; Presidential Lecturer, University of Iowa; and has been the recipient of the University of Iowa Collegiate Teaching Award.

In 2008 Professor Hovenkamp received the John Sherman Award from the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. The award is presented approximately once every three years to “a person or persons for their outstanding achievement in antitrust law, contributing to the protection of American consumers and to the preservation of economic liberty.”

Professor Hovenkamp’s publications include some 150 articles and approximately 50 essays and book reviews, as well as a dozen books. Of these, Enterprise and American Law, 1800-1860 (1991) received the Littleton-Griswold Prize of the American Historical Association; and Science and Religion in America: 1800-1860 (1978) received the Choice Award. He is the senior surviving author of Antitrust Law (formerly with Phillip Areeda & Donald Turner), currently 22 volumes and the co-author of the two volumes treatise IP and Antitrust: An Analysis of Antitrust Principles Applied to Intellectual Property Law (with Mark D. Janis, Mark A. Lemley, Christopher R. Leslie, and Michael Carrier).

His most recent books are Principles of Antitrust (2017); The Opening of American Law: Neoclassical Legal Thought, 1870-1970 (2015); Creation Without Restraint: Promoting Liberty and Rivalry in Innovation (with Christina Bohannan, 2012), and The Making of Competition Policy: Legal and Economic Sources (with Daniel A. Crane, 2013).

Queries

Please contact Lisa Penfold if you have any queries about the course. Email: lisa.penfold@ucl.ac.uk