Anti-Antitrust: The Need for Antitrust Law Reform

When (seemingly) anticompetitive tactics increase social utility and benefit consumers

36 min readJul 27, 2022

Not for copy or duplication, in whole or in part, without express written permission by the author Marc Hoag. Quotations allowed with full citation and link back to this article.

Author’s note, July 2022

I wrote this research paper in November 2007 for the final term paper of my 3L antitrust law course in law school and received a near-perfect grade.

In light of further ongoing antitrust regulation again being proposed against Apple, most notably the two bills currently in the Senate attempting to ban Apple’s default iOS apps, I thought it was an appropriate time to publish this paper publicly for the first time ever.

In this paper I anticipated the need to target Apple rather than, say, Microsoft, for anticompetitive practices. This was a somewhat unpopular view at the time as Microsoft was viewed as the “big evil company,” a veritable antithesis to Apple, the recently resurrected phoenix with Steve Jobs still at the helm.

While some of the discussion on Microsoft and other companies and products are now dated, the overarching thesis rings more true today than when written some 15 years ago, and I stand by my analysis, with history validating my arguments.

I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Marc Hoag
@MarcHoag on Twitter
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I. INTRODUCTION

“[T]he agreement may be illegal if the natural or necessary consequences of its operation are to prevent competition and create fictitious prices independent of the law of demand and supply, and to such an extent as to injuriously affect the interest of the public or the interest of any particular class of citizens who may be especially interested….” [1]…