Posts Tagged: "New Madison approach"

The New Madison Approach and the Harmonization of Antitrust and Patent Law: A Retrospective Summary

In a major 2018 speech, Justice Department Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Makan Delrahim enunciated a “New Madison Approach” (NMA) (a tribute to James Madison’s support for a strong patent system) designed to restore greater respect for efficiency-seeking patent transactions in antitrust enforcement (a 2020 law journal commentary discusses the NMA and the reactions it has elicited, both positive and negative). Consistent with the NMA, the Trump Administration Antitrust Division took a number of initiatives aimed at reducing perceived new antitrust risks associated with widely employed patent licensing practices (particularly those touching on standardization). Those new risks stemmed from Obama Administration pronouncements that seemed to denigrate patent rights, in the eyes of patent system proponents (see here, for example). Given this history, the fate (at least in the short term) of the NMA appears at best uncertain, as the new Biden Administration reevaluates the merits of specific Trump policies. Thus, a review of the NMA and the specific U.S. policy changes it engendered is especially timely. Those changes, seen broadly, began a process that accorded greater freedom to patent holders to obtain appropriate returns to their innovations through efficient licensing practices – practices that tend to promote the dissemination of new and improved technologies throughout the economy and concomitant economic welfare enhancement.

Alden Abbott

February 15, 2021

Box Score on the New Madison Approach to Antitrust and Patents

To those of us who breathe intellectual property and innovation, it sounds so obvious to say that consumers benefit greatly from the dynamic competition inventions and IP bring forth: new products, technologies and industrial sectors. However, many who breathe antitrust hold a different perspective — it presumes a patent confers market power, that commercialization amounts to anticompetitive conduct and that the right to exclude is equivalent to monopolization by incumbent players in a static market. Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Makan Delrahim, who left the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) with the changeover of administrations, bridged this gulf. Delrahim achieved this due to his background as both patent attorney and antitrust lawyer. Delrahim offered a framework he calls the New Madison Approach. The New Madison Approach advanced through the division’s amicus program.

James Edwards

February 9, 2021

The Threat to the New Madison Intellectual Property Approach

Makan Delrahim, the Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) Antitrust Division, has received much-deserved acclaim from fellow intellectual property hawks for his commitment to re-framing the Antitrust Division’s relationship with intellectual property law through a “New Madison” lens. Madison, the founder of the Constitution’s Patent and Copyright Clause, understood the nuanced relationship between the two. Over the last few years, Delrahim has gone to great lengths to restore his vision. It would be a shame if one significant oversight over music industry policy in the coming weeks incites a blemish on his otherwise impeccable three-year track record.

Roger Klein

November 24, 2020