Insights

Washington – May 5, 2021: Crowell & Moring is pleased to announce that Lisa Kimmel has been shortlisted for Concurrences and George Washington University’s “2021 Antitrust Writing Awards” for her article, “The Patent Market Power Fallacy.” The article originally appeared in The Licensing Journal. The award honors the best antitrust articles published in the past year, and will be announced during a virtual awards ceremony on Wednesday, June 30th. Kimmel is a finalist for the “best academic article” in the intellectual property category.

Washington – February 22, 2019: Crowell & Moring LLP’s Antitrust Group has again been recognized as “Highly Recommended” in Global Competition Review’s (GCR) 19th edition of the “GCR 100” – the leading ranking of the world’s competition policy law and economics practices. This marks the fourth year in a row in which the firm was ranked as “Highly Recommended” in Washington, D.C. and New York. Additionally, the group was ranked as “Recommended” in California. GCR is the leading international journal of competition policy and regulation.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), a $2 trillion stimulus package, was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives by a voice vote on March 27, 2020 despite opposition from certain Republican members who were seeking a roll call vote. The package was approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate with a vote of 96-0 on March 25, 2020. It is the third coronavirus emergency response bill considered this month in Congress, which passed the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act on March 6 and the Families First Coronavirus Response Act on March 18.

The recent ruling by a California federal court in the Federal Trade Commission’s monopolization case against Qualcomm sparked immediate and strong reactions from varied quarters. In a lengthy opinion, the court held that Qualcomm violated federal antitrust law. It ordered a broad injunction that could alter Qualcomm’s business model just as the global cellular system transitions to 5G. Qualcomm has appealed to the Ninth Circuit. 

In late January, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division submitted a statement providing its views on antitrust theories advanced by the plaintiff in u-blox v. InterDigital, a district court case involving the licensing of standard-essential patents in the wireless communications sector. 

Twenty years ago, Jerry Ellig published Dynamic Competition and Public Policy: Technology, Innovation, and Antitrust Issues (Cambridge University Press). With antitrust enforcement now a subject of intense interest among policymakers, it is time to pay tribute to Ellig’s pioneering work on dynamic competition, reflect on what we have learned since the book’s publication in 2001, and consider how to advance the much-needed Schumpeterian approach to competition. 

The 67th Annual Spring Meeting of the ABA Section of Antitrust Law is the world's largest meeting of competition and consumer protection professionals. The Spring Meeting brings together all segments of the global competition and consumer protection community - enforcement officials, private attorneys, in-house corporate counsel, academics, judges, economists, and business people - to share knowledge about all aspects of competition and consumer protection law.

As competition enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad revise their international and/or intellectual property (IP) guidelines, and a new administration takes over in Washington, it is an opportune time to survey a number of issues and controversies. These include the extraterritorial and overlapping application of U.S. and foreign competition law, as well as some of the critical IP/competition issues facing antitrust authorities around the globe. In the process, the Roundtable will take stock of growing concerns over foreign jurisdictions’ due process standards (or lack thereof). These not only raise independent “good governance” issues but also may influence the debate over comity and substantive international antitrust and IP standards. 

On July 13, President Biden signed the sweeping Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, which contained 72 directives to multiple federal agencies aimed at establishing a “whole-of-government” effort to promote competition across broad swaths of the American economy. Many recommendations within that Executive Order called upon the FTC to issue new rules relating to consumer protection, privacy, and competition issues. Even before the Executive Order, several Commissioners and other commentators were calling upon the FTC to exercise its rarely-used independent rulemaking authority to issue new rules to address a broad range of issues. 

Can current antitrust enforcement tools address the increasing prominence of digital markets? How might proposed antitrust policy reforms affect digital markets and the enforcement agencies? 

The American Intellectual Property Law Association's (AIPLA) Annual Meeting is the largest gathering of intellectual property (IP) professionals each year. Partner Lisa Kimmel will be speaking during the Antitrust, Licensing, Open-Source program on the panel "Antitrust, Patents and Licensing, Oh My!" during the event. This panel will explore the fallout from the groundbreaking FTC v. Qualcomm case, including how the FTC and DOJ's divergent views will impact the interplay of antitrust and IP.