Please find below the papers and articles that I enjoyed reading in July 2020. Surprisingly good for the summer period. You can follow me on Twitter at @LeConcurrential if you want to find out about similar articles on a more regular basis. Antitrust: Google, Facebook, and Amazon are no platforms (Thibault Schrepel) Market adjustments, Competition Law and the Covid-19 Pandemic (Frédéric...Read More
It’s been a while since I wanted to write about Ben Thompson’s aggregation theory because it has significant implications for antitrust law. Today is the day I’m finally doing it. Yay. 1- Platforms vs. aggregators Before introducing the aggregation theory, I first need to explain why all tech giants are not platforms. According to the Historical Larousse dictionary, the term platform...Read More
Dear all, Vitalik and I are very pleased to present you with this 12-minute video discussing (part of) our article entitled “Blockchain Code as Antitrust” (link). Thank you for watching!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
Please find below the papers and articles that I enjoyed reading in June 2020. Learn about them on a more regular basis by following me on Twitter at @LeConcurrential. Antitrust: Uncertain Harms: The Case of Nascent Competitors (Scott Hemphill) Blockchain Code Can Fill In When Antitrust Law Fails (Thibault Schrepel) Fascism and Monopoly (Daniel A. Crane) A brief history of Article 102...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
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
Please find below the articles that I enjoyed reading in May 2020. I don’t recall having read so many good ones in a single month. Learn about them on a more regular basis by following me on Twitter at @LeConcurrential. Antitrust: Blockchain Code as Antitrust (Thibault Schrepel & Vitalik Buterin) Do Competition Lawyers Harm Welfare? (Richard Whish) Updating “market definition” (Nicolas Petit...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
