Antitrust and Patent Law

Alan Devlin is a senior associate in the San Francisco office of Latham & Watkins LLP, where his practice focuses on the intersection of competition and intellectual-property law. He teaches an advanced course in Antitrust & Intellectual Property at the University of California Hastings College of Law, and has previously taught that subject, as well as classes in the economic analysis of law and in innovation policy, at the University of Chicago, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, and DePaul University College of Law.

Introduction ; PART I: UNDERSTANDING THE IP-COMPETITION LAW INTERFACE ; 1. The Evolving Relationship Between IP and Antitrust ; 2. Is the Patent System in Crisis? ; 3. Is the Patent System in Crisis? ; PART II: SPECIAL COMPETITION PROBLEMS IN TECHNOLOGY MARKETS ; 4. Market Definition in the IP Space ; 5. The Meaning of Competition and Market Power in IP Markets ; 6. Patent Scope, Efficient Monopoly, the Limits of the IP Exception to Competition Law ; PART III: STRATEGIC HOLD-UP AND PATENT MISUSE ; 7. Manipulation of the Standard-Setting Process ; 8. Anticompetitive Patent Assertion ; 9. Targeted Patent Aggregation ; 10. Patent Misuse ; PART IV: AGREEMENTS CONCERNING THE USE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ; 11. Joint Ventures in Technology ; 12. Exclusionary Agreements in the Pharmaceutical Industry ; 13. Patent Pools and Portfolio Cross-Licensing Agreements ; 14. Field-of-Use Restrictions, Grantbacks, and other Issues in Patent Licensing ; PART V: PREDATORY INNOVATION ; 15. Designing Closed Proprietary Systems to Exclude Rivals ; 16. Dominant IP Owners' Sharing Obligations ; 17. Manipulating the Regulatory Structure to Foreclose Competition ; Conclusion