Protecting Competition to Innovate is Protecting Competition in Future Markets: Ten Law Review Articles Leave No Doubt

Abstract

This 5-page article summarizes the 10 articles in which the author explains that whenever the American or European competition authorities claim they are directly protecting competition to innovate they are really protecting competition in Future Markets, markets for products which do not exist yet. Only if the merging firms are trying to make the same future product is their competition so close that a competition authority may appropriately block the transaction.

The author also summarizes the Future Markets Model, the Model the authorities actually use to protect competition in Future Markets. He shows that the authorities can apply this Model more or less aggressively, and that this is the key policy choice authorities must make in this area.

Competition authorities of many jurisdictions assert jurisdiction to review the same transaction because the relevant Future Market is everywhere—a firm may sell future products in any jurisdiction. And when the authorities protect nascent competition they are simply protecting competition in a Future Market, one in which a large firm and a small firm compete.

Finally, in the United States, as the author also explains in summary form, courts have not developed a doctrine which allows them to protect competition in Future Markets when they apply the Clayton Act. But they have when applying the Sherman Act. Courts should use this same standard when also applying the Clayton Act.

Keywords: Competition to Innovate, Future Market, Innovation Market, Innovation Space, Future Markets Model, Nascent Competition, Jurisdiction, Sherman Act, Clayton Act

JEL Classification: K21