How Should Antitrust Tackle Antitrust’s “Duty to Deal” in the Tech Sector? A Conversation With Erik Hovenkamp, 2023 Jerry S. Cohen Award Winner for Antitrust Scholarship

Ruled by Reason

In this episode of Ruled by Reason, guest host Roger Noll, Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Stanford University and AAI Advisor sits down with Erik Hovenkamp to chat about his award-winning article The Antitrust Duty to Deal in the Age of Big Tech” (131 Yale L.J. 1483 (2022)). Professor Hovenkamp is Assistant Professor at the USC Gould School of Law. His article argues that the law on exclusive dealing has failed to distinguish between “primary” and “secondary” refusals to deal. The article explains that the suffocating evidentiary requirements imposed on refusal to deal claims should not be applied to secondary refusals to deal because they do not implicate the same innovation concerns that motivate suspicion of “primary” refusal to deal claims. Instead, Hovenkamp argues that secondary refusal to deal claims should be evaluated analogously to tying or related vertical restraints.

Antitrust scholarship that is considered and selected for the Jerry S. Cohen Award reflects a concern for principles of economic justice, the dispersal of economic power, the maintenance of effective limitations upon economic power or the federal statutes designed to protect society from various forms of anticompetitive activity. Scholarship reflects an awareness of the human and social impacts of economic institutions upon individuals, small businesses and other institutions necessary to the maintenance of a just and humane society–values and concerns Jerry S. Cohen dedicated his life and work to fostering.