Source: http://truthonthemarket.com/category/international-trade/
Timestamp: 2015-10-05 04:01:40
Document Index: 396586221

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 337', '§ 271', '§ 271', '§ 271', '§ 337', '§ 271', '§ 271', '§ 271', '§ 337', '§ 337', '§ 337', '§ 337', '§ 337', '§ 337', '§ 271', '§ 337', '§ 271', '§ 271', '§ 337', '§ 271', '§ 337', '§ 337', '§ 337', '§ 337', '§ 271', '§ 271', '§ 271', '§ 271', '§ 271', '§ 337', '§ 271', '§ 337', '§ 337', '§ 271', '§ 337', '§ 271', '§ 337']

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Archives For international trade Suprema v. ITC: The Case for Chevron Deference
TOTM’s own Alden Abbott posted his view of the decision, and there are a couple of points we’d like to respond to, both embodied in this quote: [The ITC’s Suprema decision] would likely be viewed unfavorably by the Supreme Court, which recently has shown reluctance about routinely invoking Chevron deference … Furthermore, the en banc majority’s willingness to find inducement liability at a time when direct patent infringement has not yet occurred (the point of importation) is very hard to square with the teachings of [Limelight v.] Akamai.
In truth, we are of two minds (four minds?) regarding this view. We’re deeply sympathetic with arguments that the Supreme Court has become — and should become — increasingly skeptical of blind Chevron deference. Recently, we filed a brief on the 2015 Open Internet Order that, in large part, argued that the FCC does not deserve Chevron deference under King v. Burwell, UARG v. EPA and Michigan v. EPA (among other important cases) along a very similar line of reasoning. However, much as we’d like to generally scale back Chevron deference, in this case we happen to think that the Federal Circuit got it right. Put simply, “infringe” as used in § 337 plainly includes indirect infringement. Section 271 of the Patent Act makes it clear that indirect infringers are guilty of “infringement.” The legislative history of the section, as well as Supreme Court case law, makes it very clear that § 271 was a codification of both direct and indirect liability.
For instance, § 271(b) says that “[w]hoever actively induces infringement of a patent shall be liable as an infringer” (emphasis added). Thus, in terms of § 271, to induce infringement is to commit infringement within the meaning of the patent laws. And in § 337, assuming it follows § 271 (which seems appropriate given Congress’ stated purpose to “make it a more effective remedy for the protection of United States intellectual property rights” (emphasis added)), it must follow that when one imports “articles… that infringe” she can be liable for either (or both) § 271(a) direct infringement or § 271(b) inducement. Frankly, we think this should end the analysis: There is no Chevron question here because the Tariff Act isn’t ambiguous. But although it seems clear on the face of § 337 that “infringe” must include indirect infringement, at the very least § 337 is ambiguous and cannot clearly mean only “direct infringement.” Moreover, the history of patent law as well as the structure of the ITC’s powers both cut in favor of the ITC enforcing the Tariff Act against indirect infringers. The ITC’s interpretation of any ambiguity in the term “articles… that infringe” is surely reasonable. The Ambiguity and History of § 337 Allows for Inducement Liability
Assuming for argument’s sake that § 337’s lack of specificity leaves room for debate as to what “infringe” means, there is nothing that militates definitively against indirect liability being included in § 337. The majority handles any ambiguity of this sort well: [T]he shorthand phrase “articles that infringe” does not unambiguously exclude inducement of post-importation infringement… By using the word “infringe,” § 337 refers to 35 U.S.C. § 271, the statutory provision defining patent infringement. The word “infringe” does not narrow § 337’s scope to any particular subsections of § 271. As reflected in § 271 and the case law from before and after 1952, “infringement” is a term that encompasses both direct and indirect infringement, including infringement by importation that induces direct infringement of a method claim… Section 337 refers not just to infringement, but to “articles that infringe.” That phrase does not narrow the provision to exclude inducement of post-importation infringement. Rather, the phrase introduces textual uncertainty.
Further, the court notes that it has consistently held that inducement is a valid theory of liability on which to base § 337 cases. And lest you think that this interpretation would give some new, expansive powers to the ITC (perhaps meriting something like a Brown & Williamson exception to Chevron deference), the ITC is still bound by all the defenses and limitations on indirect liability under § 271. Saying it has authority to police indirect infringement doesn’t give it carte blanche, nor any more power than US district courts currently have in adjudicating indirect infringement. In this case, the court went nowhere near the limits of Chevron in giving deference to the ITC’s decision that “articles… that infringe” emcompasses the well-established (and statutorily defined) law of indirect infringement.
Nor does the Supreme Court’s Limelight v. Akamai decision present any problem. Limelight is often quoted for the proposition that there can be no inducement liability without direct infringement. And it does stand for that, as do many other cases; that point is not really in any doubt. But what Alden and others (including the dissenters in Suprema) have cited it for is the proposition that inducement liability cannot attach unless all of the elements of inducement have already been practiced at the time of importation. Limelight does not support that contention, however. Inducement liability contemplates direct infringement, but the direct infringement need not have been practiced by the same entity liable for inducement, nor at the same time as inducement (see, e.g., Standard Oil. v. Nippon). Instead, the direct infringement may come at a later time — and there is no dispute in Suprema regarding whether there was direct infringement (there was, as Suprema notes: “the Commission found that record evidence demonstrated that Mentalix had already directly infringed claim 19 within the United States prior to the initiation of the investigation.”). Limelight, on the other hand, is about what constitutes the direct infringement element in an inducement case. The sole issue in Limelight was whether this “direct infringement element” required that all of the steps of a method patent be carried out by a single entity or entities acting in concert. In Limelight’s network there was a division of labor, so to speak, between the company and its customers, such that each carried out some of the steps of the method patent at issue. In effect, plaintiffs argued that Limelight should be liable for inducement because it practised some of the steps of the patented method, with the requisite intent that others would carry out the rest of the steps necessary for direct infringement. But neither Limelight nor its customers separately carried out all of the steps necessary for direct infringement.
The holding of Limelight is simply inapposite to the facts of Suprema. The crux of Suprema is whether the appropriate mens rea existed to support a claim of inducement — not whether the requisite direct infringement occurred or not. The Structure of § 337 Supports The ITC’s Ability to Block Inducement
In particular, each of the enforcement powers in § 337(a) contains a clause that, in addition to a prohibition against, e.g., infringing articles at the time of importation, also prohibits “the sale within the United States after importation by the owner, importer, or consignee, of articles[.]” Thus, Congress explicitly contemplated that the ITC would have the power to act upon articles at various points in time, not limiting it to a power effective only at the moment of importation. Although the particular power to reach into the domestic market has to do with preventing the importer or its agent from making sales, this doesn’t undermine the larger point here: the ITC’s power to prevent infringing articles extends over a range of time. Given that “articles that … infringe” is at the very least ambiguous, and, as per the Federal Circuit (and our own position), this ambiguity allows for indirect infringement, it isn’t a stretch to infer that that Congress intended the ITC to have authority under § 337 to ban the import of articles that induce infringement that occurs only after the time of importation.. To interpret § 337 otherwise would be to render it absurd and to create a giant loophole that would enable infringers to easily circumvent the ITC’s enforcement powers. A Dissent from the Dissent
The dissent also takes a curious approach to § 271 by mixing inducement and contributory infringement, and generally making a confusing mess of the two. For instance, Judge Dyk says At the time of importation, the scanners neither directly infringe nor induce infringement… Instead, these staple articles may or may not ultimately be used to infringe… depending upon whether and how they are combined with domestically developed software after importation into the United States (emphasis added). Whether or not the goods were “staples articles” (and thus potentially capable of substantial noninfringing uses) has nothing to do with whether or not there was inducement. Section 271 makes a very clear delineation between inducement in § 271(b) and contributory infringement in § 271(c). While a staple article of commerce capable of substantial noninfringing uses will not serve as the basis for a contributory infringement claim, it is irrelevant whether or not goods are such “staples” for purposes of establishing inducement. The boundaries of inducement liability, by contrast, are focused on the intent of the actors: If there is an intent to induce, whether or not there is a substantial noninfringing use, there can be a violation of § 271. Contributory infringement and inducement receive treatment in separate paragraphs of § 271 and are separate doctrines comprising separate elements. This separation is so evident on the face of the law as well as in its history that the Supreme Court read the doctrine into copyright in Grokster — where, despite a potentially large number of non-infringing uses, the intent to induce infringement was sufficient to find liability. Parting Thoughts on Chevron
We have some final thoughts on the Chevron question, because this is rightly a sore point in administrative law. In this case we think that the analysis should have ended at step one. Although the Federal Circuit began with an assumption of ambiguity, it was being generous to the appellants. Did Congress speak with clear intent? We think so. Section 271 very clearly includes direct infringement as well as indirect infringement within its definition of what constitutes infringement of a patent. When § 337 references “articles … that infringe” it seems fairly obvious that Congress intended the ITC to be able to enforce the prohibitions in § 271 in the context of imported goods. But even if we advance to step two of the Chevron analysis, the ITC’s construction of § 337 is plainly permissible — and far from expansive. By asserting its authority here the ITC is simply policing the importation of infringing goods (which it clearly has the power to do), and doing so in the case of goods that indirectly infringe (a concept that has been part of US law for a very long time). If “infringe” as used in the Tariff Act is ambiguous, the ITC’s interpretation of it to include both indirect as well as direct infringement seems self-evidently reasonable. Under the dissent’s (and Alden’s) interpretation of § 337, all that would be required to evade the ITC would be to import only the basic components of an article such that at the moment of importation there was no infringement. Once reassembled within the United States, the ITC’s power to prevent the sale of infringing goods would be nullified. Section 337 would thus be read to simply write out the entire “indirect infringement” subdivision of § 271 — an inference that seems like a much bigger stretch than that “infringement” under § 337 means all infringement under § 271. Congress was more than capable of referring only to “direct infringement” in § 337 if that’s what it intended.
Rate this:Share this:TwitterGoogleFacebookRedditLinkedInEmailLike this:Like Loading...	In administrative law, intellectual property, international trade, International Trade Commission, patent, regulation, Supreme Court	Chevron, inducement, Intellectual property, international trade commission, ITC, Limelight, Patent infringement, regulation, Suprema	Let’s Inject Antitrust Principles into Antidumping Law
Alden Abbott — 17 July 2015
In a Heritage Foundation paper released today, I argue that U.S. antidumping law should be reformed to incorporate principles drawn from the antitrust analysis of predatory pricing. A brief summary of my paper follows. Such a change would transform antidumping law from a special interest cronyist tool that harms U.S. consumers into a sensible procompetitive provision.
Imports and Dumping
Imported goods and services provide great benefits to the American economy and to American consumers. Imports contribute to U.S. job creation on a large scale, provide key components incorporated by U.S. manufacturers into their products, and substantially raise the purchasing power of American consumers.
Despite the benefits of imports, well-organized domestic industries have long sought to protect themselves from import competition by convincing governments to impose import restrictions that raise the costs of imported goods and thus reduce the demand for imports. One of the best known types of import restrictions (one that is allowed under international trade agreements and employed by many other countries as well) is an “antidumping duty,” a special tariff assessed on imported goods that allegedly are set at “unfairly lower” rates than the prices for the same products sold in their domestic market.
Product-specific U.S. antidumping investigations are undertaken by the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) and the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC, an independent federal agency), in response to a petition from a U.S. producer, a group of U.S. producers, or a U.S. labor union. The DOC determines if dumping has occurred and calculates the “dumping margin” (the difference between a “fair” and an “unfair” price) for the setting of antidumping tariffs. The USITC decides whether a domestic industry has been “materially injured” by dumping. If the USITC finds material injury, the DOC publishes an antidumping order, which requires importers of the investigated merchandise to post a cash deposit equal to the estimated dumping duty margins.
Economists define dumping as international “price discrimination”— the charging of lower prices (net of selling expenses and transportation) in a foreign market than in a domestic market for the same product. Despite its bad-sounding label, price discrimination, whether foreign or domestic, is typically a perfectly legitimate profitable business practice that benefits many consumers. Price discrimination allows a producer to sell to additional numbers of price-sensitive consumers in the low-priced market, to their benefit: Those consumers would have bought nothing at all if faced with a uniformly applied higher price.
Dumping harms domestic consumers and the overall economy only when the foreign seller successfully drives domestic producers out of business by charging an overly low “predatory” (below its cost) import price, monopolizes the domestic market, and then raises import prices to monopoly levels, thereby recouping any earlier losses. In such a situation, domestic consumers pay higher prices over time due to the domestic monopoly, and domestic producers that exited the market due to predation suffer welfare losses as well.
The Problem with Current U.S. Antidumping Law
Although antidumping law originally was aimed at counteracting such predation, antidumping provisions long ago were reformulated to raise the likelihood that dumping would be found in matters under investigation. In particular, 1974 legislation eliminated consideration of sales made below full production cost in the home market and promoted the use of “constructed value” calculations for home-market sales that included approximations for the cost of production, selling, general and administrative expenses, and an amount for profit. This methodology, compared to the traditional approach of comparing actual net foreign product prices with net U.S. prices, tended to favor domestic producers by yielding higher margins of dumping.
The favoring of domestic industries continued with the Trade Tariff Act of 1984, which compelled the USITC to use a “cumulation” analysis that could subject multiple countries to anti-dumping penalties if one county’s product was found to cause material injury to the establishment of a domestic industry. More specifically, under cumulation, if multiple countries are being investigated for dumping the same particular product and if exports from any one of those countries, or all in combination, are found to cause material injury, then all exports are made subject to an antidumping order. Thus, imports from individual countries that individually could not be shown to cause material injury face a price increase — an anti–American consumer outcome that lacks any legitimate rationale.
These and other developments have further encouraged American industries to invoke antidumping as a protectionist mechanism. Thus, it is not surprising that in recent decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of U.S. antidumping cases filed and the number of affirmative injury findings. Also noteworthy is the proliferation of foreign antidumping laws since 1980, which harms American exporters. Overall, the economic impact of antidumping law on the American economy has grown substantially. In short, antidumping is a cronyist special interest law that harms American consumers.
Moreover, even taking into account domestic industrial interests, prohibiting dumping likely would not have a positive effect on domestic industry as a whole. Antidumping restrictions on imported raw materials and industrial products used by U.S. firms make it difficult for these firms to compete internationally. In fact, the USITC is statutorily barred from considering their impact on consuming industries. These consuming industries are often a larger part of the U.S. economy than the industries benefitting from antidumping regulation, and producers of upstream products have become reliant on restricting customer access to foreign goods rather than better responding to their customers’ needs.
Furthermore, antidumping harms the U.S. economy by reducing American firms’ incentive to produce more efficiently. Non-predatory dumping spurs domestic firms to produce more efficiently (at lower costs) so that they can reduce prices and compete with imports in order to remain in the market. Finally, the existence of antidumping law may encourage implicit collusion among domestic firms and foreign firms to soften price competition. The truth is that when domestic industries complain that non-predatory dumping is “unfair,” they are really objecting to competition on the merits — competition that raises overall long-term American economic welfare.
A New Antitrust-Based Predatory Pricing Test for Dumping
In sum, aggressive price competition by foreign producers benefits American consumers, enhances economic efficiency, and promotes competitive vigor — net benefits to the American economy. Only below-cost “predatory dumping” by a foreign monopolist that allows it to drive out American producers and then charge monopoly prices to American consumers should be a source of U.S. policy concern and legal prohibition.
A test that would prohibit only harmful predatory dumping can be drawn directly from a standard developed by U.S. courts and scholars for determining illegal price predation under American antitrust law. Applying that test in antidumping cases, antidumping tariffs would be imposed only when two conditions were satisfied.
First, the government would have to determine that the imports under scrutiny were priced at a below-cost level that caused the foreign producer to incur losses on the production and sale of those imports. This would be a price below “average avoidable cost,” which would include all the costs that a firm could have avoided incurring by not producing the allegedly dumped products.
Second, if it met the first test, the government would have to show that the firm allegedly doing the dumping would be likely to “recoup” — that is, charge high monopoly prices for future imports that more than make up for its current losses on below cost imports.
This proposed new antidumping methodology would be administrable. Indeed, because it focuses narrowly and solely on certain readily ascertainable costs and data on domestic industry viability, it should be easier (and thus less costly) to apply than the broad and uncertain methodologies under current law.
Of perhaps greater significance, it could serve as a sign that the U.S. government favors competition on the merits and rejects special-interest cronyism — a message that could prove valuable in international negotiations aimed at having other nations’ antidumping regimes adopt a similar approach. To the extent that other jurisdictions adopted reforms that emulated the new American approach, U.S. exporters would benefit from reduced barriers to trade, a further boon to the U.S. economy.
U.S. antidumping law should be reformed so that it is subject to a predatory pricing test drawn from American antitrust law. Application of such a standard would strengthen the American economy and benefit U.S. consumers while precluding any truly predatory dumping designed to destroy domestic industries and monopolize American industrial sectors.
Rate this:Share this:TwitterGoogleFacebookRedditLinkedInEmailLike this:Like Loading...	In antidumping, antitrust, international trade	antidumping, antitrust, international trade	The Good, Bad, and the Ugly of the EU’s Proposed Data Protection Regulation
Ben Sperry — 19 June 2015
It’s becoming more and more clear that there should be real concerns about the direction the EU is heading with its DSM. As the EU moves forward with the 16 different action proposals that make up this ambitious strategy, we should all pay special attention to the actual rules that come out of it, such as the recent Data Protection Regulation. Are EU regulators simply trying to hogtie innovators in the the wild, wild, west, as some have suggested? Let’s break it down. Here are The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
The Data Protection Regulation, as proposed by the Ministers of Justice Council and to be taken up in trilogue negotiations with the Parliament and Council this month, will set up a single set of rules for companies to follow throughout the EU. Rather than having to deal with the disparate rules of 28 different countries, companies will have to follow only the EU-wide Data Protection Regulation. It’s hard to determine whether the EU is right about its lofty estimate of this benefit (€2.3 billion a year), but no doubt it’s positive. This is what free trade is about: making commerce “regular” by reducing barriers to trade between states and nations.
Additionally, the Data Protection Regulation would create a “one-stop shop” for consumers and businesses alike. Regardless of where companies are located or process personal information, consumers would be able to go to their own national authority, in their own language, to help them. Similarly, companies would need to deal with only one supervisory authority.
Further, there will be benefits to smaller businesses. For instance, the Data Protection Regulation will exempt businesses smaller than a certain threshold from the obligation to appoint a data protection officer if data processing is not a part of their core business activity. On top of that, businesses will not have to notify every supervisory authority about each instance of collection and processing, and will have the ability to charge consumers fees for certain requests to access data. These changes will allow businesses, especially smaller ones, to save considerable money and human capital. Finally, smaller entities won’t have to carry out an impact assessment before engaging in processing unless there is a specific risk. These rules are designed to increase flexibility on the margin.
If this were all the rules were about, then they would be a boon to the major American tech companies that have expressed concern about the DSM. These companies would be able to deal with EU citizens under one set of rules and consumers would be able to take advantage of the many benefits of free flowing information in the digital economy.
Unfortunately, the substance of the Data Protection Regulation isn’t limited simply to preempting 28 bad privacy rules with an economically sensible standard for Internet companies that rely on data collection and targeted advertising for their business model. Instead, the Data Protection Regulation would set up new rules that will impose significant costs on the Internet ecosphere.
For instance, giving citizens a “right to be forgotten” sounds good, but it will considerably impact companies built on providing information to the world. There are real costs to administering such a rule, and these costs will not ultimately be borne by search engines, social networks, and advertisers, but by consumers who ultimately will have to find either a different way to pay for the popular online services they want or go without them. For instance, Google has had to hire a large “team of lawyers, engineers and paralegals who have so far evaluated over half a million URLs that were requested to be delisted from search results by European citizens.”
Privacy rights need to be balanced with not only economic efficiency, but also with the right to free expression that most European countries hold (though not necessarily with a robust First Amendment like that in the United States). Stories about the right to be forgotten conflicting with the ability of journalists to report on issues of public concern make clear that there is a potential problem there. The Data Protection Regulation does attempt to balance the right to be forgotten with the right to report, but it’s not likely that a similar rule would survive First Amendment scrutiny in the United States. American companies accustomed to such protections will need to be wary operating under the EU’s standard.
Similarly, mandating rules on data minimization and data portability may sound like good design ideas in light of data security and privacy concerns, but there are real costs to consumers and innovation in forcing companies to adopt particular business models.
Mandated data minimization limits the ability of companies to innovate and lessens the opportunity for consumers to benefit from unexpected uses of information. Overly strict requirements on data minimization could slow down the incredible growth of the economy from the Big Data revolution, which has provided a plethora of benefits to consumers from new uses of information, often in ways unfathomable even a short time ago. As an article in Harvard Magazine recently noted,
The story [of data analytics] follows a similar pattern in every field… The leaders are qualitative experts in their field. Then a statistical researcher who doesn’t know the details of the field comes in and, using modern data analysis, adds tremendous insight and value.
And mandated data portability is an overbroad per se remedy for possible exclusionary conduct that could also benefit consumers greatly. The rule will apply to businesses regardless of market power, meaning that it will also impair small companies with no ability to actually hurt consumers by restricting their ability to take data elsewhere. Aside from this, multi-homing is ubiquitous in the Internet economy, anyway. This appears to be another remedy in search of a problem.
The bad news is that these rules will likely deter innovation and reduce consumer welfare for EU citizens.
Finally, the Data Protection Regulation suffers from an ugly defect: it may actually be ratifying a form of protectionism into the rules. Both the intent and likely effect of the rules appears to be to “level the playing field” by knocking down American Internet companies.
For instance, the EU has long allowed flexibility for US companies operating in Europe under the US-EU Safe Harbor. But EU officials are aiming at reducing this flexibility. As the Wall Street Journal has reported:
For months, European government officials and regulators have clashed with the likes of Google, Amazon.com and Facebook over everything from taxes to privacy…. “American companies come from outside and act as if it was a lawless environment to which they are coming,” [Commissioner Reding] told the Journal. “There are conflicts not only about competition rules but also simply about obeying the rules.” In many past tussles with European officialdom, American executives have countered that they bring innovation, and follow all local laws and regulations… A recent EU report found that European citizens’ personal data, sent to the U.S. under Safe Harbor, may be processed by U.S. authorities in a way incompatible with the grounds on which they were originally collected in the EU. Europeans allege this harms European tech companies, which must play by stricter rules about what they can do with citizens’ data for advertising, targeting products and searches. Ms. Reding said Safe Harbor offered a “unilateral advantage” to American companies.
Thus, while “when in Rome…” is generally good advice, the Data Protection Regulation appears to be aimed primarily at removing the “advantages” of American Internet companies—at which rent-seekers and regulators throughout the continent have taken aim. As mentioned above, supporters often name American companies outright in the reasons for why the DSM’s Data Protection Regulation are needed. But opponents have noted that new regulation aimed at American companies is not needed in order to police abuses:
Speaking at an event in London, [EU Antitrust Chief] Ms. Vestager said it would be “tricky” to design EU regulation targeting the various large Internet firms like Facebook, Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. because it was hard to establish what they had in common besides “facilitating something”… New EU regulation aimed at reining in large Internet companies would take years to create and would then address historic rather than future problems, Ms. Vestager said. “We need to think about what it is we want to achieve that can’t be achieved by enforcing competition law,” Ms. Vestager said.
Moreover, of the 15 largest Internet companies, 11 are American and 4 are Chinese. None is European. So any rules applying to the Internet ecosphere are inevitably going to disproportionately affect these important, US companies most of all. But if Europe wants to compete more effectively, it should foster a regulatory regime friendly to Internet business, rather than extend inefficient privacy rules to American companies under the guise of free trade.
Near the end of the The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Blondie and Tuco have this exchange that seems apropos to the situation we’re in:
Blondie: [watching the soldiers fighting on the bridge] I have a feeling it’s really gonna be a good, long battle.
Tuco: Blondie, the money’s on the other side of the river.
Tuco: Amigo, I said on the other side, and that’s enough. But while the Confederates are there we can’t get across.
The EU’s DSM proposals are going to be a good, long battle. But key players in the EU recognize that the tech money — along with the services and ongoing innovation that benefit EU citizens — is really on the other side of the river. If they blow up the bridge of trade between the EU and the US, though, we will all be worse off — but Europeans most of all.
Rate this:Share this:TwitterGoogleFacebookRedditLinkedInEmailLike this:Like Loading...	In barriers to entry, international competition, international politics, international trade, internet, privacy, technology, truth on the market	Competition law, Data Protection Regulation, Digital Single Market, EU, European Commission, European Union, innovation, privacy, regulation, rent seeking	More than New International Trade Deals are Needed to Liberalize International Trade and Promote Economic Freedom
Alden Abbott — 12 June 2015
During the recent debate over whether to grant the Obama Administration “trade promotion authority” (TPA or fast track) to enter into major international trade agreements (such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP), little attention has been directed to the problem of remaining anticompetitive governmental regulatory obstacles to liberalized trade and free markets. Those remaining obstacles, which merit far more public attention, are highlighted in an article coauthored by Shanker Singham and me on competition policy and international trade distortions.
As our article explains, international trade agreements simply do not reach a variety of anticompetitive welfare-reducing government measures that create de facto trade barriers by favoring domestic interests over foreign competitors. Moreover, many of these restraints are not in place to discriminate against foreign entities, but rather exist to promote certain favored firms. We dub these restrictions “anticompetitive market distortions” or “ACMDs,” in that they involve government actions that empower certain private interests to obtain or retain artificial competitive advantages over their rivals, be they foreign or domestic. ACMDs are often a manifestation of cronyism, by which politically-connected enterprises successfully pressure government to shield them from effective competition, to the detriment of overall economic growth and welfare. As we emphasize in our article, existing international trade rules have been able to reach ACMDs, which include: (1) governmental restraints that distort markets and lessen competition; and (2) anticompetitive private arrangements that are backed by government actions, have substantial effects on trade outside the jurisdiction that imposes the restrictions, and are not readily susceptible to domestic competition law challenge. Among the most pernicious ACMDs are those that artificially alter the cost-base as between competing firms. Such cost changes will have large and immediate effects on market shares, and therefore on international trade flows.
Likewise, with the growing internationalization of commerce, ACMDs not only diminish domestic consumer welfare – they increasingly may have a harmful effect on foreign enterprises that seek to do business in the country imposing the restraint. The home nations of the affected foreign enterprises, moreover, may as a practical matter find it not feasible to apply their competition laws extraterritorially to curb the restraint, given issues of jurisdictional reach and comity (particularly if the restraint flies under the colors of domestic law). Because ACMDs also have not been constrained by international trade liberalization initiatives, they pose a serious challenge to global welfare enhancement by curtailing potential trade and investment opportunities.
Interest group politics and associated rent-seeking by well-organized private actors are endemic to modern economic life, guaranteeing that ACMDs will not easily be dismantled. What is to be done, then, to curb ACMDs?
As a first step, Shanker Singham and I have proposed the development of a metric to estimate the net welfare costs of ACMDs. Such a metric could help strengthen the hand of international organizations (including the International Competition Network, the World Bank, and the OECD) – and of reform-minded public officials – in building the case for dismantling these restraints, or (as a last resort) replacing them with less costly means for benefiting favored constituencies. (Singham, two other coauthors, and I have developed a draft paper that delineates a specific metric, which we hope will be suitable for public release in the near future.)
Furthermore, free market-oriented think tanks can also be helpful by highlighting the harm special interest governmental restraints impose on the economy and on economic freedom. In that regard, the Heritage Foundation’s excellent work in opposing cronyism deserves special mention.
Working to eliminate ACMDs and thereby promoting economic liberty is an arduous long-term task – one that will only succeed in increments, one battle at a time (the current principled effort to eliminate the Ex-Im Bank, strongly supported by the Heritage Foundation, is one such example). Nevertheless, it is very much worth the candle.
Rate this:Share this:TwitterGoogleFacebookRedditLinkedInEmailLike this:Like Loading...	In antitrust, international trade, regulation, rent seeking	antitrust, international trade, regulation, rent seeking	Mandated “fair use” language has no place in trade promotion authority
Geoffrey Manne — 22 April 2015
Earlier this week Senators Orrin Hatch and Ron Wyden and Representative Paul Ryan introduced bipartisan, bicameral legislation, the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 (otherwise known as Trade Promotion Authority or “fast track” negotiating authority). The bill would enable the Administration to negotiate free trade agreements subject to appropriate Congressional review.
Nothing bridges partisan divides like free trade.
Top presidential economic advisors from both parties support TPA. And the legislation was greeted with enthusiastic support from the business community. Indeed, a letter supporting the bill was signed by 269 of the country’s largest and most significant companies, including Apple, General Electric, Intel, and Microsoft.
Among other things, the legislation includes language calling on trading partners to respect and protect intellectual property. That language in particular was (not surprisingly) widely cheered in a letter to Congress signed by a coalition of sixteen technology, content, manufacturing and pharmaceutical trade associations, representing industries accounting for (according to the letter) “approximately 35 percent of U.S. GDP, more than one quarter of U.S. jobs, and 60 percent of U.S. exports.”
Strong IP protections also enjoy bipartisan support in much of the broader policy community. Indeed, ICLE recently joined sixty-seven think tanks, scholars, advocacy groups and stakeholders on a letter to Congress expressing support for strong IP protections, including in free trade agreements.
Despite this overwhelming support for the bill, the Internet Association (a trade association representing 34 Internet companies including giants like Google and Amazon, but mostly smaller companies like coinbase and okcupid) expressed concern with the intellectual property language in TPA legislation, asserting that “[i]t fails to adopt a balanced approach, including the recognition that limitations and exceptions in copyright law are necessary to promote the success of Internet platforms both at home and abroad.”
But the proposed TPA bill does recognize “limitations and exceptions in copyright law,” as the Internet Association is presumably well aware. Among other things, the bill supports “ensuring accelerated and full implementation of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights,” which specifically mentions exceptions and limitations on copyright, and it advocates “ensuring that the provisions of any trade agreement governing intellectual property rights that is entered into by the United States reflect a standard of protection similar to that found in United States law,” which also recognizes copyright exceptions and limitations.
What the bill doesn’t do — and wisely so — is advocate for the inclusion of mandatory fair use language in U.S. free trade agreements.
Fair use is an exception under U.S. copyright law to the normal rule that one must obtain permission from the copyright owner before exercising any of the exclusive rights in Section 106 of the Copyright Act.
Including such language in TPA would require U.S. negotiators to demand that trading partners enact U.S.-style fair use language. But as ICLE discussed in a recent White Paper, if broad, U.S.-style fair use exceptions are infused into trade agreements they could actually increase piracy and discourage artistic creation and innovation — particularly in nations without a strong legal tradition implementing such provisions.
All trade agreements entered into by the U.S. since 1994 include a mechanism for trading partners to enact copyright exceptions and limitations, including fair use, should they so choose. These copyright exceptions and limitations must conform to a global standard — the so-called “three-step test,” — established under the auspices of the 1994 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, and with roots going back to the 1967 amendments to the 1886 Berne Convention.
According to that standard,
Members shall confine limitations or exceptions to exclusive rights to
certain special cases, which
do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and
do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the right holder.
This three-step test provides a workable standard for balancing copyright protections with other public interests. Most important, it sets flexible (but by no means unlimited) boundaries, so, rather than squeezing every jurisdiction into the same box, it accommodates a wide range of exceptions and limitations to copyright protection, ranging from the U.S.’ fair use approach to the fair dealing exception in other common law countries to the various statutory exceptions adopted in civil law jurisdictions.
Fair use is an inherently common law concept, developed by case-by-case analysis and a system of binding precedent. In the U.S. it has been codified by statute, but only after two centuries of common law development. Even as codified, fair use takes the form of guidance to judicial decision-makers assessing whether any particular use of a copyrighted work merits the exception; it is not a prescriptive statement, and judicial interpretation continues to define and evolve the doctrine.
Most countries in the world, on the other hand, have civil law systems that spell out specific exceptions to copyright protection, that don’t rely on judicial precedent, and that are thus incompatible with the common law, fair use approach. The importance of this legal flexibility can’t be understated: Only four countries out of the 166 signatories to the Berne Convention have adopted fair use since 1967.
Additionally, from an economic perspective the rationale for fair use would seem to be receding, not expanding, further eroding the justification for its mandatory adoption via free trade agreements.
As digital distribution, the Internet and a host of other technological advances have reduced transaction costs, it’s easier and cheaper for users to license copyrighted content. As a result, the need to rely on fair use to facilitate some socially valuable uses of content that otherwise wouldn’t occur because of prohibitive costs of contracting is diminished. Indeed, it’s even possible that the existence of fair use exceptions may inhibit the development of these sorts of mechanisms for simple, low-cost agreements between owners and users of content – with consequences beyond the material that is subject to the exceptions. While, indeed, some socially valuable uses, like parody, may merit exceptions because of rights holders’ unwillingness, rather than inability, to license, U.S.-style fair use is in no way necessary to facilitate such exceptions. In short, the boundaries of copyright exceptions should be contracting, not expanding.
It’s also worth noting that simple marketplace observations seem to undermine assertions by Internet companies that they can’t thrive without fair use. Google Search, for example, has grown big enough to attract the (misguided) attention of EU antitrust regulators, despite no European country having enacted a U.S-style fair use law. Indeed, European regulators claim that the company has a 90% share of the market — without fair use.
Meanwhile, companies like Netflix contend that their ability to cache temporary copies of video content in order to improve streaming quality would be imperiled without fair use. But it’s impossible to see how Netflix is able to negotiate extensive, complex contracts with copyright holders to actually show their content, but yet is somehow unable to negotiate an additional clause or two in those contracts to ensure the quality of those performances without fair use.
Properly bounded exceptions and limitations are an important aspect of any copyright regime. But given the mix of legal regimes among current prospective trading partners, as well as other countries with whom the U.S. might at some stage develop new FTAs, it’s highly likely that the introduction of U.S.-style fair use rules would be misinterpreted and misapplied in certain jurisdictions and could result in excessively lax copyright protection, undermining incentives to create and innovate. Of course for the self-described consumer advocates pushing for fair use, this is surely the goal. Further, mandating the inclusion of fair use in trade agreements through TPA legislation would, in essence, force the U.S. to ignore the legal regimes of its trading partners and weaken the protection of copyright in trade agreements, again undermining the incentive to create and innovate.
There is no principled reason, in short, for TPA to mandate adoption of U.S-style fair use in free trade agreements. Congress should pass TPA legislation as introduced, and resist any rent-seeking attempts to include fair use language.
Rate this:Share this:TwitterGoogleFacebookRedditLinkedInEmailLike this:Like Loading...	In contracts, copyright, intellectual property, international center for law & economics, international politics, international trade, technology	copyright, copyright law, fair use, fast track, free trade agreements, Intellectual property, Intellectual Property Rights, TPA, trade agreement, trade agreements	ICLE White Paper: Broad fair use exceptions could discourage innovation worldwide
Geoffrey Manne — 9 March 2015
Today, the International Center for Law & Economics released a white paper, co-authored by Executive Director Geoffrey Manne and Senior Fellow Julian Morris, entitled Dangerous Exception: The detrimental effects of including “fair use” copyright exceptions in free trade agreements.
Dangerous Exception explores the relationship between copyright, creativity and economic development in a networked global marketplace. In particular, it examines the evidence for and against mandating a U.S.-style fair use exception to copyright via free trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and through “fast-track” trade promotion authority (TPA).
In the context of these ongoing trade negotiations, some organizations have been advocating for the inclusion of dramatically expanded copyright exceptions in place of more limited language requiring that such exceptions conform to the “three-step test” implemented by the 1994 TRIPs Agreement.
The paper argues that if broad fair use exceptions are infused into trade agreements they could increase piracy and discourage artistic creation and innovation — especially in nations without a strong legal tradition implementing such provisions.
The expansion of digital networks across borders, combined with historically weak copyright enforcement in many nations, poses a major challenge to a broadened fair use exception. The modern digital economy calls for appropriate, but limited, copyright exceptions — not their expansion.
The white paper is available here. For some of our previous work on related issues, see:
Amicus Brief of ICLE and CEI in ABC, Inc., et al. v. Aereo, Inc., U.S. Supreme Court
Regulating Innovation: Competition Policy and Patent Law Under Uncertainty, by Geoffrey Manne & Joshua Wright
Incentivising research and development for the diseases of poverty, by Julian Morris, Philip Stevens & Alec van Gelder
Copyright Reform, Can Free Marketeers Agree on Copyright?, CEI panel discussion with Geoffrey Manne and others
How the Court’s “looks-like-cable-tv” test in Aereo protects the cloud and Why the Supreme Court’s Aereo decision protects creators without endangering the cloud, by Geoffrey Manne, Ben Sperry & Ryan Radia
Just Trade: The moral imperative of eliminating barriers to trade, by Julian Morris
Permissionless innovation does not mean no contracts required, by Geoffrey Manne
Rate this:Share this:TwitterGoogleFacebookRedditLinkedInEmailLike this:Like Loading...	In copyright, film, intellectual property, international center for law & economics, international trade, law and economics, markets, music, political economy	copyright, copyright exceptions, fair use, free trade agreements, geoffrey manne, international trade, Julian Morris, TPA, TPP, trade promotion authority fast-track, Trans-Pacific Partnership	Transatlantic Trade Negotiations: Keeping Regulation in Check
Rate this:Share this:TwitterGoogleFacebookRedditLinkedInEmailLike this:Like Loading...	In cost-benefit analysis, international politics, international trade, regulation	Enterprise Cities, Competition, and Economic Growth
Alden Abbott — 19 September 2014
Shanker Singham of the Babson Global Institute (formerly a leading international trade lawyer and author of the most comprehensive one-volume work on the interplay between competition and international trade policy) has published a short article introducing the concept of “enterprise cities.” This article, which outlines an incentives-based, market-oriented approach to spurring economic development, is well worth reading. A short summary follows.
Singham points out that the transition away from socialist command-and-control economies, accompanied by international trade liberalization, too often failed to create competitive markets within developing countries. Anticompetitive market distortions imposed by government and generated by politically-connected domestic rent-seekers continue to thrive – measures such as entry barriers that favor entrenched incumbent firms, and other regulatory provisions that artificially favor specific powerful domestic business interests (“crony capitalists”). Such widespread distortions reduce competition and discourage inward investment, thereby retarding innovation and economic growth and reducing consumer welfare. Political influence exercised by the elite beneficiaries of the distortions may prevent legal reforms that would remove these regulatory obstacles to economic development. What, then, can be done to disturb this welfare-inimical state of affairs, when sweeping, nationwide legal reforms are politically impossible?
One incremental approach, advanced by Professor Paul Romer and others, is the establishment of “charter cities” – geographic zones within a country that operate under government-approved free market-oriented charters, rather than under restrictive national laws. Building on this concept, Babson Global Institute has established a “Competitiveness and Enterprise Development Project” (CEDP) designed to promote the notion of “Enterprise Cities” (ECs) – geographically demarcated zones of regulatory autonomy within countries, governed by a Board. ECs would be created through negotiations between a national government and a third party group, such as CEDP. The negotiations would establish “Regulatory Framework Agreements” embodying legal rules (implemented through statutory or constitutional amendments by the host country) that would apply solely within the EC. Although EC legal regimes would differ with respect to minor details (reflecting local differences that would affect negotiations), they would be consistent in stressing freedom of contract, flexible labor markets, and robust property rights, and in prohibiting special regulatory/legal favoritism (so as to avoid anticompetitive market distortions). Protecting foreign investment through third party arbitration and related guarantees would be key to garnering foreign investor interest in ECs. The goal would be to foster a business climate favorable to investment, job creation, innovation, and economic growth. The EC Board would ensure that agreed-to rules would be honored and enforced by EC-specific legal institutions, such as courts.
Because market-oriented EC rules will not affect market-distortive laws elsewhere within the host country, well-organized rent-seeking elites may not have as strong an incentive to oppose creating ECs. Indeed, to the extent that a share of EC revenues is transferred to the host country government (depending upon the nature of the EC’s charter), elites might directly benefit, using their political connections to share in the profits. In short, although setting up viable ECs is no easy matter, their establishment need not be politically unfeasible. Indeed, the continued success of Hong Kong as a free market island within China (Hong Kong places first in the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom), operating under the Basic Law of Hong Kong, suggests the potential for ECs to thrive, despite having very different rules than the parent state’s legal regime. (Moreover, the success of Hong Kong may have proven contagious, as China is now promoting a new Shanghai Free Trade Zone thaw would compete with Hong Kong and Singapore.)
The CEDP is currently negotiating the establishment of ECs with a number of governments. As Singham explains, successful launch of an EC requires: (1) a committed developer; (2) land that can be used for a project; (3) a good external infrastructure connecting the EC with the rest of the country; and (4) “a government that recognizes the benefits to its reform agenda and to its own economic plan of such a designation of regulatory autonomy and is willing to confront its own challenges by thinking outside the box.” While the fourth prerequisite may be the most difficult to achieve, internal pressures for faster economic growth and increased investment may lead jurisdictions with burdensome regulatory regimes to consider ECs.
Furthermore, as Singham stresses, by promoting competition on the merits, free from favoritism, a successful EC could stimulate successful entrepreneurship. Scholarly work points to the importance of entrepreneurship to economic development.
Finally, the beneficial economic effects of ECs could give additional ammunition to national competition authorities as they advocate for less restrictive regulatory frameworks within their jurisdictions. It could thereby render more effective the efforts of the many new national competition authorities, whose success in enhancing competitive conditions within their jurisdictions has been limited at best.
ECs are no panacea – they will not directly affect restrictive national regulatory laws that benefit privileged special interests but harm the overall economy. However, to the extent they prove financial successes, over time they could play a crucial indirect role in enhancing competition, reducing inefficiency, and spurring economic growth within their host countries.
Rate this:Share this:TwitterGoogleFacebookRedditLinkedInEmailLike this:Like Loading...	In antitrust, business, competition advocacy, entrepreneurship, international competition, international trade, regulation	A Reply to the Rubins on Crony Capitalism
The argument that Ex-Im Bank activities are an example of a “welfare-enhancing” counter-distortion is particularly strained, given the fact that most U.S. exporters gain no benefits from Ex-Im Bank funding, while the American taxpayer foots the bill. Indeed, capital is diverted away from “unlucky” exporters to the politically connected few who know how to play the Washington game (well-capitalized companies that are least in need of the taxpayer’s largesse). As stated by Doug Bandow in Forbes, “[n]o doubt, Exim financing makes some deals work. But others die because ExIm diverts credit from firms without agency backing. Unfortunately, it is easier to see the benefits of the former than the costs of the latter.” In short, the recitation of Ex-Im Bank’s alleged “benefits” to American exporters who are “seen” ignores the harm imposed on other “unseen” American companies and taxpayers. (What’s more, responding to Ex-Im Bank, foreign governments are incentivized to impose their own subsidy programs to counteract the Ex-Im Bank subsidies.) Thus, the case for retaining Ex-Im Bank is nothing more than another example of Bastiat’s “broken window” fallacy. In sum, the goal should be to simplify legal structures and repeal welfare-inimical laws and regulations, not try to correct them through new inherently flawed regulatory intrusions. In my view, the only examples of rent-seeking that might yield net social benefits are those associated with regulatory reform (such as the expiration of the Ex-Im Bank authorization) or with the creation of new markets (as Gordon Brady and I have argued).
Rate this:Share this:TwitterGoogleFacebookRedditLinkedInEmailLike this:Like Loading...	In international trade, political economy, regulation	Crony Capitalism	Richard Epstein Critiques Obama Administration Veto of ITC Exclusion Order in Samsung v. Apple Dispute
Adam Mossoff — 9 August 2013
Over at the blog for the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property, Richard Epstein has posted a lengthy essay that critiques the Obama Administration’s decision this past August 3 to veto the exclusion order issued by the International Trade Commission (ITC) in the Samsung v. Apple dispute filed there (ITC Investigation No. 794). In his essay, The Dangerous Adventurism of the United States Trade Representative: Lifting the Ban against Apple Products Unnecessarily Opens a Can of Worms in Patent Law, Epstein rightly identifies how the 3-page letter issued to the ITC creates tremendous institutional and legal troubles in the name an unverified theory about “patent holdup” invoked in the name of an equally overgeneralized and vague belief in the “public interest.”
The choice in question here thus boils down to whether the low rate of voluntary failure justifies the introduction of an expensive and error-filled judicial process that gives all parties the incentive to posture before a public agency that has more business than it can possibly handle. It is on this matter critical to remember that all standards issues are not the same as this particularly nasty, high-stake dispute between two behemoths whose vital interests make this a highly atypical standard-setting dispute. Yet at no point in the Trade Representative’s report is there any mention of how this mega-dispute might be an outlier. Indeed, without so much as a single reference to its own limited institutional role, the decision uses a short three-page document to set out a dogmatic position on issues on which there is, as I have argued elsewhere, good reason to be suspicious of the overwrought claims of the White House on a point that is, to say the least, fraught with political intrigue
Ironically, there was, moreover a way to write this opinion that could have narrowed the dispute and exposed for public deliberation a point that does require serious consideration. The thoughtful dissenting opinion of Commissioner Pinkert pointed the way. Commissioner Pinkert contended that the key factor weighing against granting Samsung an exclusion order is that Samsung in its FRAND negotiations demanded from Apple rights to use certain non standard-essential patents as part of the overall deal. In this view, the introduction of nonprice terms on nonstandard patterns represents an abuse of the FRAND standard. Assume for the moment that this contention is indeed correct, and the magnitude of the problem is cut a hundred or a thousand fold. This particular objection is easy to police and companies will know that they cannot introduce collateral matters into their negotiations over standards, at which point the massive and pointless overkill of the Trade Representative’s order is largely eliminated. No longer do we have to treat as gospel truth the highly dubious assertions about the behavior of key parties to standard-setting disputes.
But is Pinkert correct? On the one side, it is possible to invoke a monopoly leverage theory similar to that used in some tie-in cases to block this extension. But those theories are themselves tricky to apply, and the counter argument could well be that the addition of new terms expands the bargaining space and thus increases the likelihood of an agreement. To answer that question to my mind requires some close attention to the actual and customary dynamics of these negotiations, which could easily vary across different standards. I would want to reserve judgment on a question this complex, and I think that the Trade Representative would have done everyone a great service if he had addressed the hard question. But what we have instead is a grand political overgeneralization that reflects a simple-minded and erroneous view of current practices.
You can read the essay at CPIP’s blog here, or you can download a PDF of the white paper version here (please feel free to distribute digitally or in hardcopy).
Rate this:Share this:TwitterGoogleFacebookRedditLinkedInEmailLike this:Like Loading...	In administrative, intellectual property, international trade, litigation, patent, politics	Apple, exclusion order, international trade commission, International Trade Commission, Obama Administration, patent holdup, policy, Policy Statement, public interest, Richard Epstein, Samsung, united states trade representative, veto	Older	SearchAuthors
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