29 May 2018
Economists and lawyers have said that trade secrets and employee training investment can encourage companies to agree not to hire each other’s workers, but a counsel in the Department of Justice’s antitrust division defended the agency’s policy of treating such coordination as per se illegal.
25 May 2018
The ability of standard-essential patent-holders to extract higher royalties when they breach promises to license on fair terms is not necessarily a harm to competition, even if it leads to higher prices for consumers, a counsel to the head of the US Department of Justice’s antitrust division has said.
29 May 2018
A senior official at the US Federal Trade Commission has said that concern about an online platform user’s reasonable data expectations is a consumer protection issue that should not be tackled through competition enforcement.
Baker Botts, Washington, DC
James Kress is a Partner in Baker Botts’ Antitrust and Competition Practice, where he represents clients in complex private antitrust and commercial litigation and before government agencies in merger and nonmerger antitrust investigations.
Cornerstone Research, San Francisco
Matthew Lynde is a senior vice president at Cornerstone Research; he also heads the firm’s intellectual property practice. Dr. Lynde provides expert testimony and consulting in applied economics. His work covers a range of cases, including intellectual property, antitrust and competition, securities litigation, and breach of contract.
Professor, Graduate School, Haas School of Business and Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley
Chief Economist, Google and Emeritus Professor, School of Information, Haas School of Business and Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley
8.30: Welcome coffee and registration
9.00: Chairs’ morning welcome
James Kress, Baker Botts, Washington, DC
Matthew Lynde, Cornerstone Research, San Francisco
9.10: Keynote address
William Rinner, Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, US Department of Justice, Washington, DC
9.40: High tech mergers
Increasingly large high-profile mergers are occurring in the high-tech industry. Do they raise unique issues or should they be analyzed as any other merger? Do mergers facilitate or thwart innovation and how do we tell the difference? How should we analyze the combination of large IP portfolios and big data?
Moderator:
Debbie Feinstein, Arnold & Porter, Washington, DC
Panel:
Paul Cuomo, Baker Botts, Washington, DC
Mark Lemley, William H. Neukom Professor of Law, Stanford Law School and Director, Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology, Stanford University, Stanford
David Emanuelson, Senior Antitrust Counsel, Intel, Santa Clara
Carl Shapiro, University of California, Berkeley
11.05: Coffee break
11.25: Emerging antitrust issues in high tech
This panel will address the latest hot topics at the intersection of antitrust and IP: How will enforcement agencies apply competition law principles to products/services that rely on big data? How will the US DOJ’s new perspective on antitrust issues in SSOs affect enforcement and innovation? What is the next frontier in reverse payment cases?
Moderator:
Logan Breed, Hogan Lovells, Washington, DC
Panel:
Justin McCrary, Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley
Hal Varian, Chief Economist, Google and Emeritus Professor, School of Information, Haas School of Business and Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley
Noah Brumfield, White & Case, Silicon Valley and Washington, DC
Thomas Dahdouh, Regional Director, Western Region, Federal Trade Commission, San Francisco
12.50: Networking lunch
13.50: Chairs' afternoon welcome
James Kress, Baker Botts, Washington, DC
Matthew Lynde, Cornerstone Research, San Francisco
14.00: Developments in FRAND ‘as applied’: how parties are working with the ground rules now in place
Over the last decade, many of the core antitrust principles attendant to the essential patent holders commitment to license on a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory basis have been established in jurisdictions around the world. This panel will explore how those rules are being applied in real world litigation and licensing disputes, what the apparent shift in focus at the Department of Justice portends, and where the panelists see the next battlegrounds.
Moderator:
James Kress, Baker Botts, Washington, DC
Panel:
David Killough, Assistant General Counsel, Microsoft, Redmond
Jay Jurata, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, Washington, DC
Chris Longman, Vice President, Legal Counsel, Qualcomm, San Diego
15.25: Coffee break
15.45: International market power and licensing in IP intensive industries
As the US becomes a smaller part of the global competition and IP enforcement regime, this panel will consider the roles of international enforcement agencies at the intersection of antitrust and IP, including Chinese, Indian and European views on SEP licensing, abuse of dominance with IP and private information, transnational merger reviews and remedies, and trade secret regulation.
Moderator:
Matthew Lynde, Cornerstone Research, San Francisco
Panel:
Yingling Wei, JunHe, Beijing
Aaron Yeater, Analysis Group, Boston
Arshad (Paku) Khan, Khaitan & Co, New Delhi and Berkeley
17.05: Chairs' closing remarks
James Kress, Baker Botts, Washington, DC
Matthew Lynde, Cornerstone Research, San Francisco
17.15: Close of conference