One of the lasting influences of the academic law and economics campaign against Microsoft in its antitrust suit with the US Department of Justice (which I'm still awed by- simply masterful) is the common assumption that any monpoly is harmful to competition, consumers and innovation.

The analytical shortcomings of using monopoly with these assumptions are numerous. Solveig told us that with the definition of monopoly broadened, instances of perceived harm multiply, as do irrelevant analysis that does not apply to the particular technology or market in question. The association of harm with monopoly carries with it implicit support for such proactive antitrust enforcement as to make Joel Klein feel like he did a lazy job in government, and for the current antitrust wing of the DOJ feel non-existent. Further, while resting on such shaky ground, those who use monopoly too freely conjure up all kinds of arguments to support their positions, including measuring consumer harm by the un-measureable concepts of culture and freedom.

Ill reasoned monopoly arguments miss several things, including Robert Merges’ insight that firms in the technology industries compete for market, not in markets- thereby citing monopoly as a central characteristic of the industries. Years ago, in a brilliant article in the Harvard Business Review, Dr. Charles Ferguson foresaw the economic landscape of the software industry and predicted that leveraging IPRs to protect platform architectures would enable monopoly, the most viable form of economic success and technological progress in the industry. Even earlier, Schumpeter hinted at the importance of monopolies where perfect competition does not induce sufficient incentive for firms to innovate in high fixed cost industries.

Seeing such use and abuse of monopoly leads me to think that like “schizophrenia,” monopoly should be dropped from general policy discourse, if there is no formal economic analysis, due to its acquired lack of validity, impreciseness and stigmatizing effect. Either that, or someone should prod the makers of the Smurfs to use "monopoly" in their show to demonstrate it as an often meaningless term.