Dear readers, As previously announced, I am incredibly happy and honored to publish guest articles written by several of the world’s most renowned antitrust scholars every month of the year 2020. The one for July is authored by Frédéric Jenny, Professor of Economics at ESSEC Business School, and Chairman of the OECD Competition Committee. In it, Frédéric discusses how competition agencies have been responding to the challenges...Read More
One day, Darwin encountered a young public permissionless blockchain. Here is the transcript of their conversation (all Darwin’s quotes are directly taken from his book, “On the Origin of Species“): Narrator: The blockchain is concerned about not fitting in the existing framework. The blockchain is not a market and is not a firm (see this article)....Read More
Today, the Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Court of Justice) has sided with the Bundeskartellamt against Facebook (see). By doing so, the Court has deemed the absence of causality link between Facebook’s size on the market and its practice irrelevant. Once again, Facebook is being judged for combining WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook users’ data without their consent (but for improving these apps). Should I create...Read More
Dear readers, As previously announced, I am incredibly happy and honored to publish guest articles written by several of the world’s most renowned antitrust scholars every month of the year 2020. The one for June is authored by Scott Hemphill, Moses H. Grossman Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and co-director of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy. In it, Scott discusses...Read More
In March, I launched a survey to document the most essential antitrust literature of the 2010s. As I said at the time, my objective was to build a database of the most valuable antitrust/competition law academic papers published in the last ten years. We’ve never had so many authors and journals publishing antitrust/competition law-related subjects; I thought constructing a...Read More
We often talk about “history books” as if such things still existed, or mattered. Oh well, for what it’s worth, let me discuss the first (U.S.) case of blockchain antitrust. We long thought United American Corp. v. Bitmain was the one (read). In this case (filed in December 2018), United American Corp. acted against various firms (including those of prominent...Read More
I am absolutely delighted to let you know about the publication of a new article I co-authored with Vitalik Buterin (co-founder of the Ethereum): “Blockchain Code as Antitrust“. It starts from the following premise: the rule of law does not govern all human interactions. Against this background, one may want to rely on other means to increase...Read More
Dear readers, As previously announced, I am incredibly happy and honored to publish guest articles written by several of the world’s most renowned antitrust scholars every month of the year 2020. The one for May is authored by Richard Whish, Emeritus Professor at King’s College London. In it, Richard explores whether competition lawyers harm welfare, exposing in turn different stratagems and asking who they benefit. I am confident that...Read More
Blockchain antitrust is a fascinating subject. The number of cases is rising (I will discuss that shortly), and antitrust agencies are slowly but surely starting to devote resources to the topic. With that in mind, I am delighted to publish my latest article entitled Libra: A Concentrate of “Blockchain Antitrust”. This is a short one (10 pages) dealing with a...Read More
Dear readers, As previously announced, I am incredibly happy and honored to publish guest articles written by several of the world’s most renowned antitrust scholars every month of the year 2020. The one for April is authored by Eleanor M. Fox, the Walter J. Derenberg Professor of Trade Regulation at New York University School of Law. In it, Eleanor explores how antitrust and other instruments have been...Read More
Dear readers, As previously announced, I am incredibly happy and honored to publish guest articles written by several of the world’s most renowned antitrust scholars every month of the year 2020. The one for March is authored by William E. Kovacic, Global Competition Professor of Law and Policy, George Washington University Law School; Visiting Professor, Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London; Non-executive...Read More
Dear readers, these past few weeks, I have been publishing videos in which I presented and explained the “The Theory of Granularity: A Path for Antitrust in Blockchain Ecosystems” (freely accessible on SSRN). This post puts them all in one place. Thank you for watching. Thibault. *** Video #1: Understanding the theory of the firm as used...Read More
Dear readers, here’s the fourth and final video of the series dealing with “The Theory of Granularity: A Path for Antitrust in Blockchain Ecosystems” (freely accessible on SSRN). I previously showed that antitrust law is based on Ronald Coase’s theory of the firm, that public blockchains escape that theory, and that, accordingly, a new theory is needed. I now want...Read More
Dear readers, As previously announced, I am incredibly happy and honored to publish guest articles authored by some of the world’s most renowned antitrust scholars every month of the year 2020. The one for February has been written by Daniel A. Crane, Frederick Paul Furth Sr. Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, and it explores the topic of “Democracy and Monopoly in...Read More
The background story It all started on Wednesday, February 12, 2020. ALL? The (first) Google hearing, of course. It has been a long wait, but hopefully worth it. Previously on the Google Saga, the European Commission has announced the decision (in June 2017), has published it (in December of the same year), and ever since, has fined Google two more times. An...Read More
