"Preface" [2008] ELECD 242; in Drexl, Josef (ed), "Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Competition Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Competition Law

Editor(s): Drexl, Josef

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420475

Section Title: Preface

Number of pages: 6

Extract:

Preface


The application of competition law to intellectual-property-related cases may
well be regarded as one of the most complex and critical fields of competition
policy. Whereas in the past intellectual property and competition were mostly
considered as contradictory concepts, it is today widely admitted that both
fields of law, intellectual property and competition law, are meant to promote
complementary goals, namely innovation based on dynamic concepts of
competition. Still it largely remains disputed whether and under which condi-
tions competition law may intervene and restrain the use of an intellectual
property right. At this very moment this dispute also seems to be mirrored by
transatlantic disagreement. In September 2007 the European Court of First
Instance upheld the decision of the Commission to order Microsoft inter alia
to provide competitors with interoperability information on its operating
system despite possible intellectual property rights involved. Thomas Barnett,
Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division of the US
Department of Justice, reacted immediately and accused the Court of `harm-
ing consumers by chilling innovation and discouraging competition'.
Concern about expanding and possibly `anti-competitive' intellectual prop-
erty rights, blocking patents and patent ambush cases, network effects, espe-
cially in information technology industries, and the growing need for
standardization compel those practising in these areas of law to request more
fundamental research on the interface of intellectual property and competition
law. Such research, however, in both economic theory and legal studies, is still
in a stage of infancy. Economics can well explain ...