The Big Tech Remedy No One is Talking About - Compulsory Licensing
Google is similar to AT&T from the 1950s.
Hi everyone,
Today the Washington Monthly published an article I wrote detailing the significant benefits that compulsory licensing (once a frequently used antitrust remedy) has on reducing high barriers to entry and decreasing the market power of dominant intermediary firms. Compulsory licensing is also vastly under-discussed in the current debate surrounding increased enforcement. I argue that Google would make a prime candidate for this potent remedy.
As I explain in the article, compulsory licensing requires a firm to share certain intellectual property with all interested parties. The Department of Justice most famously used this remedy against AT&T in the 1950s. After the company was forced to share its large patent portfolio, a wave of innovation spread throughout the then-nascent computer industry. Many argue that the development of the computer industry would have been significantly hampered if AT&T was not required to share its technology.
Here is the introduction of my article. The full article can be read here.
Last week, President Biden signed a landmark executive order that requires the administrative agencies of the federal government to promote fair competition in the marketplace. The order arrives against the backdrop of the greatest resurgence in antitrust enforcement in almost a generation, most of it focused on Big Tech. Leveraging the House antitrust subcommittee’s landmark 450-page report released in October, federal and state antitrust enforcers initiated a blockbuster case against Google and Congress introduced five bipartisan bills aimed squarely at Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.
While federal administrative agencies carry out Biden’s order and Congress puts its antitrust legislation through the lengthy review process, federal antitrust enforcers like the Department of Justice and the FTC should consider a speedier remedy that hasn’t been used much lately: compulsory licensing.