Antitrust and IP: Partners in Freedom
Tim Swanson’s post about Microsoft’s ongoing Euro-troubles with Windows Vista highlights an important trend in modern antitrust law. It’s been fashionable in recent years to speak of a conflict between antitrust and intellectual property law—as Stephan Kinsella has done—but the reality is that antitrust is becoming a new method of IP rather than its antithesis. Adobe’s complaint against Microsoft is a perfect example. The company seeks antitrust enforcement to protect its own exclusive control over free PDF creation. It’s a patent in practice if not in name. The same is true of the other anti-Microsoft firms such as Symantec and Real Networks.
Antitrust is a conservative method of regulation. It starts with the assumption that the status quo is better than any proposed alteration to the market structure. The innovator has the burden of proving that its actions will be “pro-competitive,� a term that is alternatively defined as helping consumers or helping competitors. That’s not to say that every proposed innovation is good or bad—only the market can make that decision—only that the regulator prefers the known present to the unknown future.
