Microsoft announced its long-awaited Windows Phone 7 will ship soon and early reviews are favorable. Their official announcement came last week, but some have been testing out pre-release prototypes and can’t stop talking about it. Apple blogger John Gruber of the website Daring Fireball called the unit a "real, credible [...]
At ACT, we’ve taken great interest in the media coverage of a possible pending broadband deal between Verizon and Google. While we know nothing more than what’s been reported in the news, this appears to be an interesting development in the net neutrality debate. Advocates of net neutrality have differing [...]
CT member Peter Carnes (CEO of Traffax, Inc.) testified before of the House Committee on Small Business today about “The Impact of Intellectual Property on Entrepreneurship and Job Creation”. Peter shared the stage with a really diverse group of IP owners – from ABRO, which has problems protecting its trademarks, [...]
As we’ve discussed before, the FTC recently decided to dust off its Section 5 authority to go after “unfair methods of competition” in lieu of using its tradition antitrust authority (Section 2) to pursue some of its tougher cases. This has many antitrust experts concerned, most notably, Bob Litan, former Clinton administration. Apparently, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is also concerned by the FTC’s use of Section 2.
Over the past few weeks an online debate has been brewing between antitrust scholars over the FTC case against Intel. The focus of the debate has been the FTC's decision to pursue most of its case using its Section 5 authority to prevent "unfair and deceptive" practices, rather than its Section 2 authority for combating anti-competitive behavior. The discussion began with a piece by Bob Litan, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department in the Clinton Administration, entitled "The FTC's Radical Application of Section 5." As the title suggests, Litan has some serious concerns about the FTC's case in general and its application of Section 5. It's a pretty compelling piece that I recommend to all you antitrust geeks, but if you're short on time/attention span I'll try to summarize.