Barnett On Interoperability Between Antitrust and IP
Thomas Barnett, the head of DOJ’s Antitrust division, spoke earlier today at George Mason’s School of Law Symposium on Managing Antitrust Issues in a Global Marketplace. The text of his speech is on the DOJ website.
MarketWatch reported on the speech:
the Justice Department’s antitrust chief on Wednesday made a case for taking a hands-off approach to Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iTunes music service and iPod music device, which are dominant in the online music business. He also offered an implicit criticism of European governments that want the iPod player and iTunes music to be compatible with rival products. In June, French lawmakers approved government-backed legislation aimed at forcing Apple to make its online music and its iPod “interoperable” with other products. Regulators in Norway and Sweden have threatened to impose fines if interoperability isn’t made possible. ” Apple provides a useful illustration of how an attack on intellectual-property rights can threaten dynamic innovation,” Thomas O. Barnett, who heads the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said in the text of a speech in which he also noted that he’s not investigating Apple’s activities. … Barnett rejected complaints that Apple harmed consumers by selling expensive iPods that lock them in to buying the same costly devices in the future. “This type of business model has been criticized in the past because the cheap product was the one that was sold first - think cheap razors and expensive replacement blades or cheap printers and expensive replacement ink,” Barnett said. “Apple’s model is the opposite: consumers buy the expensive iPod device first, then have the option - not the obligation - to use the free iTunes software and buy the cheap iTunes songs.” He also batted down criticisms that Apple is hurting competitors. “Antitrust law protects competition, not competitors,” Barnett said. “There are real costs to using antitrust law to protect competitors rather than competition. There is the problem of deterring innovation by the target of the ‘dominance’ attack: if a firm knows it will have to share its intellectual property or be managed by a committee of government regulators, it may not innovate in the first instance.” Barnett’s remarks come as the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission hold a series of hearings dealing with control of the markets by individual firms. He has said that while individual firms with monopoly power can harm consumers, “mere size” doesn’t demonstrate harm.
RSS Feed
September 14th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
[…] Yesterday I had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion on standards for single firm conduct in the United States and the EU at the George Mason Antitrust Symposium, which focused on antitrust issues in the global marketplace (and I might add, was put together quite nicely by the GMU Law Review folks). The materials from many of the presentations are available at the GMU website. Thomas Barnett’s speech has managed to get some attention in the press (HT: Antitrust Review), in particular, because of his use of the antitrust attacks on Apple’s iPod and iTunes as an example of how “an attack on intellectual property rights can threaten dynamic innovation.” […]