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Thomas McCoy, AMD's Executive Vice President, Legal Affairs and Chief Administrative Officer, responds to Solveig on Intel. In the 2004 Trinko decision, Justice Scalia made a careful distinction: Mere monopoly status is not illegal. But the use of anticompetitive conduct to gain or to maintain a monopoly is illegal, because such practices block the dynamic potential of competition.
This is the distinction employed by the European authorities in their statement of objections against Intel. They did not base their case merely on the size and success of Intel. Rather, the authorities concluded that Intel waged a sustained campaign to leverage its monopoly status to coerce computer makers into boycotting AMD.
Thus, as the European Commission explained, Intel's conduct is “bad for competition and consumers.” And that’s exactly the kind of conclusion that justified the century of landmark U.S. antitrust decisions spanning the decades from Standard Oil, through Alcoa and AT&T, to Microsoft. Good to see McCoy acknowledge Scalia's distinction that monopolies are not per se illegal nor indication of necessary competition policy enforcement. Antitrust readers will recall this issue was eloquently addressed by Judge Hand- "(t)he successful competitor, having been urged to compete, must not be turned upon when he wins."
A solid review of dominent firm antitrust analysis can be found by Thomas Piraino in Reconciling the Harvard and Chicago Schools, A New Antitrust Approach for the 21st Century, Indiana Law Journal, Vol. 82, Issue 2: 2007.
posted by Noel Le @ 4:00 PM | Antitrust
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