Almunias Rede vom 7. Juli 2010 zum EU-Kartellrecht im digitalen Zeitalter hat international viel Staub aufgewirbelt. Im Kern ging es dort um das Verhältnis von Kartellrecht und IP. Auch Almunias Counterpart in der Antitrust Division des U.S. Department of Justice, Christine Varney, hat kürzlich zu dieser Schnittstelle Stellung bezogen, speziell mit Blick auf das Patentrecht. Lesen Sie die beiden Reden und stellen Sie für sich fest, welche Welt Ihnen eher liegt.
Varney spricht ausführlich über Standardisierung, SSOs, RAND-Lizenzierung und die Rolle von Patentverletzungsverfahren aus kartellrechtlicher Sicht (“Promoting Innovation Through Patent and Antitrust Law and Policy”, 26. Mai 2010). Ihr zentraler Gedanke ist, dass das Kartellrecht Transparenz sicherstellen muss:
market forces function best when participants are well-informed and can engage in up-front negotiations.
Wer wissen will, wie die USA an “hold ups” herangehen, ist bei diesem Vortrag gut aufgehoben. Ebenso interessant ist Varneys Einstieg in das Thema – mit einer Klarheit, die man bei Almunia (noch?) vermisst:
… innovation is the essential element not only of economic growth, but of human progress as well. We thus have a vital interest in seeing it flourish.
Today, it is widely recognized that patent and antitrust drive innovation in different but complementary ways. Both disciplines promote dynamic efficiency: that is, a system of property rights and market rules that create appropriate incentives for invention, innovation, and risk taking – delivering the greatest returns for society not just for today, but tomorrow as well … Antitrust recognizes the critical role that intellectual property rights play in driving innovation and so values these rights. Yet antitrust applies the same analytical framework to intellectual property as it does to other forms of property, and imposes some rules about how the patent monopoly can – and cannot – be used …
The stakes are high for competition and innovation if the patent system is not working properly or antitrust enforcement policy is improperly calibrated. Our ability to use one regime to correct for shortcomings in the other is limited … The competitive implications of flaws in either system are tremendous, and although many of the issues on the table today are properly issues of only patent or antitrust in the first instance, their ramifications for the other system will certainly be worth consideration in the final analysis.
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