|
1
| 1 | UNITED STATES FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION
|
| 2 | and
|
| 3 | UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
|
| 4 |
|
| 5 |
|
| 6 | SHERMAN ACT SECTION 2 JOINT HEARING
|
| 7 | BUSINESS TESTIMONY
|
| 8 | TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2007
|
| 9 |
|
| 10 |
|
| 11 | HELD AT:
|
| 12 | UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
|
| 13 | GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
|
| 14 | EXECUTIVE CENTER - 450
|
| 15 | NORTH CITYFRONT PLAZA DRIVE
|
| 16 | CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60611
|
| 17 | 9:30 A.M. TO 4:00 P.M.
|
| 18 |
|
| 19 |
|
| 20 |
|
| 21 |
|
| 22 |
|
| 23 | Reported and Transcribed by:
|
| 24 | PAMELA A. STAFFORD, CSR, RMR
|
| 25 | |
2
| 1 | APPEARANCES:
|
| 2 |
|
| 3 | MODERATORS:
|
| 4 |
|
| 5 | Morning Session:
|
| 6 | JAIME TARONJI, JR.
|
| 7 | Attorney, Policy Studies,
|
| 8 | Federal Trade Commission
|
| 9 | and
|
| 10 | JOSEPH J. MATELIS, II
|
| 11 | Attorney Advisor, Legal Policy Section
|
| 12 | Antitrust Division, Department of Justice
|
| 13 | and
|
| 14 | WILLIAM COHEN
|
| 15 | Deputy General Counsel for Policy Studies
|
| 16 | Federal Trade Commission
|
| 17 |
|
| 18 |
|
| 19 | PANELISTS:
|
| 20 |
|
| 21 | Morning Session:
|
| 22 | David Balto
|
| 23 | Patrick Sheller
|
| 24 | Ron Stern
|
| 25 | |
3
| 1 | APPEARANCES CONTINUED:
|
| 2 |
|
| 3 | MODERATORS:
|
| 4 |
|
| 5 | Afternoon Session:
|
| 6 | JOSEPH J. MATELIS, II
|
| 7 | Attorney Advisor, Legal Policy Section
|
| 8 | Antitrust Division, Department of Justice
|
| 9 | and
|
| 10 | KAREN GRIMM,
|
| 11 | Assistant General Counsel for Policy Studies
|
| 12 | Federal Trade Commission
|
| 13 |
|
| 14 |
|
| 15 | PANELISTS:
|
| 16 |
|
| 17 | Afternoon Session:
|
| 18 | Sean Heather
|
| 19 | Bruce Sewell
|
| 20 | Bruce Wark
|
| 21 |
|
| 22 |
|
| 23 |
|
| 24 |
|
| 25 | |
4
| 1 | REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
|
| 2 | FEBRUARY 13, 2007
|
| 3 | MR. TARONJI: Good morning.
|
| 4 | I'm Jim Taronji from the Federal Trade
|
| 5 | Commission. I'm one of the moderators for
|
| 6 | this morning's session. I'm joined this
|
| 7 | morning by Bill Cohen, Deputy General Counsel
|
| 8 | for Policy Studies at the Federal Trade
|
| 9 | Commission. Our other co-moderator today is
|
| 10 | Joe Matelis from the Antitrust Division of
|
| 11 | the U.S. Department of Justice.
|
| 12 | Before we start today, let me
|
| 13 | cover a few housekeeping matters. As a
|
| 14 | courtesy to our speakers, please turn off
|
| 15 | your cell phones, Blackberries, and other
|
| 16 | devices, or put them on vibrate. And I will
|
| 17 | do that myself.
|
| 18 | Finally, we request that the
|
| 19 | audience not ask any questions or make
|
| 20 | comments during the hearings. Thank you.
|
| 21 | Before introducing our
|
| 22 | speakers, I would like to first thank the
|
| 23 | University of Chicago Graduate School of
|
| 24 | Business for hosting these joint FTC/DOJ
|
| 25 | hearings to solicit business testimony on |
5
| 1 | single-firm conduct under Section 2 of the
|
| 2 | Sherman Act. In particular, I would like to
|
| 3 | thank Dean Ted Snyder and the staff of
|
| 4 | the Gleacher Center for offering us their
|
| 5 | facilities and for making the necessary
|
| 6 | arrangements for us to hold these
|
| 7 | hearings.
|
| 8 | And finally, I would like to
|
| 9 | thank my FTC and DOJ colleagues as well as
|
| 10 | the FTC's Midwest regional office who have
|
| 11 | worked very hard to put together these
|
| 12 | hearings in the Windy City, in the cold Windy
|
| 13 | City.
|
| 14 | We are honored to have
|
| 15 | assembled a distinguished group of panelists
|
| 16 | from a number of companies and associations
|
| 17 | that have agreed to offer their testimony in
|
| 18 | connection with these hearings. These
|
| 19 | panelists will provide their perspectives on
|
| 20 | how companies operate within the complex area
|
| 21 | of Sherman Section 2 jurisprudence,
|
| 22 | including for some companies how they
|
| 23 | navigate not only the U.S. application of
|
| 24 | antitrust laws to single-firm conduct, but
|
| 25 | that of the diverse antitrust regimes around |
6
| 1 | the world.
|
| 2 | Our panelists this morning
|
| 3 | are David Balto for the Generic
|
| 4 | Pharmaceutical Association, Patrick Sheller
|
| 5 | from Kodak, and Ron Stern from G.E.
|
| 6 | Our format this morning will
|
| 7 | be as follows. Each speaker will make a 20-
|
| 8 | to 25-minute presentation. We will then take
|
| 9 | a 15-minute break. After the break, we will
|
| 10 | reconvene and have a moderated discussion
|
| 11 | with our panelists.
|
| 12 | These hearings in Chicago are
|
| 13 | an important component of the joint FTC and
|
| 14 | Antitrust Division hearings on single-firm
|
| 15 | conduct under Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
|
| 16 | They are designed to identify areas where
|
| 17 | single-firm conduct is causing competitive
|
| 18 | harm, areas where antitrust enforcement may
|
| 19 | be chilling desirable activity, and areas
|
| 20 | where additional guidance would be most
|
| 21 | valuable.
|
| 22 | FTC chairman, Deborah Majoras
|
| 23 | made it clear at the opening session of these
|
| 24 | hearings that she wanted to hear from
|
| 25 | businesses, either through their executives |
7
| 1 | or their legal advisers. As Chairman Majoras
|
| 2 | said, and I'll paraphrase, we want these
|
| 3 | panels to discuss business conduct from the
|
| 4 | market perspective from the ground up. That
|
| 5 | is, examine why and when firms engage in it,
|
| 6 | how they do it, and what effect it produces
|
| 7 | for the firm, for other firms, customers and
|
| 8 | competitors and for consumers. We want these
|
| 9 | discussions to include knowledgeable business
|
| 10 | people or their legal advisers.
|
| 11 | Over these last eight months
|
| 12 | we have held hearings on specific types of
|
| 13 | business conduct, such as predatory pricing,
|
| 14 | refusals to deal, bundled and loyalty
|
| 15 | discounts, tying arrangements, exclusive
|
| 16 | dealing, and misleading and deceptive
|
| 17 | conduct.
|
| 18 | Some of these panels have
|
| 19 | included business executives or their legal
|
| 20 | advisers. In addition, we've covered some
|
| 21 | general areas, such as business strategy,
|
| 22 | business history, and economic empirical
|
| 23 | studies.
|
| 24 | The sessions today are
|
| 25 | designed to further FTC Chairman Majoras's |
8
| 1 | goal to obtain as much insight and real-world
|
| 2 | experience as possible from business
|
| 3 | representatives.
|
| 4 | This is the second set of
|
| 5 | hearings that have specifically been devoted
|
| 6 | to obtaining testimony from company
|
| 7 | representatives and associations. The first
|
| 8 | set of business testimony hearings were in
|
| 9 | Berkeley, California on January 30th, 2007.
|
| 10 | We look forward to hearing
|
| 11 | the panelists' comments and to the
|
| 12 | round-table discussion. I want to thank all
|
| 13 | of them for agreeing to participate in
|
| 14 | today's hearings. We know that it takes a
|
| 15 | lot of time to prepare for these hearings.
|
| 16 | So again, thank you for your time and
|
| 17 | efforts.
|
| 18 | I would now like to turn it
|
| 19 | over to my colleague and co-moderator Joe
|
| 20 | Matelis from the Antitrust Division for any
|
| 21 | remarks he would like to make. Joe.
|
| 22 | MR. MATELIS: Thank you, Jim.
|
| 23 | The Department of Justice's Antitrust
|
| 24 | Division is very pleased to participate in
|
| 25 | today's hearing. In the single-firm conduct |
9
| 1 | hearings we have held to date, we have
|
| 2 | benefitted from the insights of many
|
| 3 | highly-skilled antitrust attorneys and
|
| 4 | economists.
|
| 5 | Today's hearing, as well as
|
| 6 | the sessions held last month in Berkeley,
|
| 7 | California, grew out of the belief that we
|
| 8 | could also learn much about single-firm
|
| 9 | conduct from businesses. Our panelists today
|
| 10 | are the people who help devise and implement
|
| 11 | business plans, aware that their firm's
|
| 12 | unilateral conduct may be challenged in
|
| 13 | private or government litigation and by
|
| 14 | foreign competition authorities. Their
|
| 15 | companies are also directly affected by the
|
| 16 | conduct of other firms.
|
| 17 | Whether you've had occasion
|
| 18 | to view Section 2 of the Sherman Act as a
|
| 19 | sword directed at the heart of your business
|
| 20 | or as a shield protecting you from
|
| 21 | anticompetitive conduct of others, we look
|
| 22 | forward to hearing from you today.
|
| 23 | On behalf of the Antitrust
|
| 24 | Division, I would also like to take this
|
| 25 | opportunity to thank the Gleacher Center and |
10
| 1 | the University of Chicago Graduate School of
|
| 2 | Business for hosting these hearings. Also on
|
| 3 | behalf of the Division, I'd like to thank
|
| 4 | David, Patrick, and Ron for volunteering your
|
| 5 | time today. We know that these hearings take
|
| 6 | a lot of effort, especially when traveling to
|
| 7 | Chicago in February. And we're very grateful
|
| 8 | for a valuable public service that you're
|
| 9 | rendering. Finally, I'd also like to thank
|
| 10 | Jim and Bill and their colleagues at the
|
| 11 | Federal Trade Commission for all their hard
|
| 12 | work organizing today's hearing. Thanks.
|
| 13 | MR. TARONJI: Thank you, Joe.
|
| 14 | Our first speaker this
|
| 15 | morning is David Balto. David Balto has
|
| 16 | practiced antitrust law for over 20 years,
|
| 17 | both at the Federal Trade Commission and the
|
| 18 | Antitrust Division. At the FTC he was the
|
| 19 | attorney adviser to Chairman Pitofsky and
|
| 20 | assistant director for policy and evaluation
|
| 21 | in the Bureau of Competition. He helped
|
| 22 | guide many of the FTC's pharmaceutical and
|
| 23 | health care enforcement efforts, including
|
| 24 | challenging patent settlement agreements.
|
| 25 | David has written extensively |
11
| 1 | on antitrust and health care competition and
|
| 2 | is the vice chair of the ABA Antitrust
|
| 3 | Section Federal Civil Enforcement Committee.
|
| 4 | He graduated from Northeastern University
|
| 5 | School of Law and the University of
|
| 6 | Minnesota. And David is speaking today on
|
| 7 | behalf of the Generic Pharmaceutical
|
| 8 | Association. David.
|
| 9 | MR. BALTO: Thank you, Joe.
|
| 10 | I want to express my privilege for -- to
|
| 11 | come here and testify in these hearings. And
|
| 12 | I want to mention on that that my remarks
|
| 13 | today are my own and don't necessarily
|
| 14 | reflect the remarks -- should not necessarily
|
| 15 | be attributed to the Generic Pharmaceutical
|
| 16 | Association or any of its members.
|
| 17 | Let me set out the outlines
|
| 18 | of my testimony. I want to start off with
|
| 19 | one indisputable fact, hopefully indisputable
|
| 20 | fact, the importance of generic competition
|
| 21 | in the market.
|
| 22 | I'm then going to try to
|
| 23 | talk about how pharmaceutical markets are
|
| 24 | different than other types of markets and why
|
| 25 | that should make a difference in the analysis |
12
| 1 | of single-firm conduct.
|
| 2 | I'm then going to talk about
|
| 3 | two forms of anticompetitive conduct by
|
| 4 | branded pharmaceutical companies and how
|
| 5 | those forms of conduct should be analyzed,
|
| 6 | and then perhaps close with some suggestions.
|
| 7 | Let me begin with the indisputable.
|
| 8 | Generic competition benefits
|
| 9 | every consumer in the United States. Generic
|
| 10 | drugs sell for about 70 percent less than
|
| 11 | branded drugs. They account for 56 percent
|
| 12 | of all prescriptions and less than 13 percent
|
| 13 | of all pharmaceutical expenditures.
|
| 14 | The last time TEO studied
|
| 15 | this issue in 1994 they found that generic
|
| 16 | drugs saved consumers between 8 and $10
|
| 17 | billion a year at a time when generic
|
| 18 | substitution was vastly lower than it is
|
| 19 | today.
|
| 20 | Antitrust enforcement in the
|
| 21 | generic drug industry is essential. Let me
|
| 22 | put this into context. Today you can walk
|
| 23 | out of this hearing room and go to your
|
| 24 | local pharmacy and buy a generic form of
|
| 25 | Remeron, Relafen, Buspar, Taxol, Augmentin, |
13
| 1 | Paxil, Coumadin, and Platinol. For each of
|
| 2 | these drugs, the branded pharmaceutical firm,
|
| 3 | a dominant firm attempted to extend its
|
| 4 | monopoly through some form of alleged
|
| 5 | exclusionary conduct.
|
| 6 | In some cases they filed sham
|
| 7 | petitions before the FDA. In some cases they
|
| 8 | engaged in sham litigation. In other cases
|
| 9 | they engaged in inequitable conduct before
|
| 10 | the Patent and Trademark Office.
|
| 11 | All together, these drugs
|
| 12 | accounted for more that $10 billion of
|
| 13 | purchases by U.S. consumers. And because of
|
| 14 | enforcement actions taken by the Federal
|
| 15 | Trade Commission, the state attorneys
|
| 16 | general, and private antitrust attorneys,
|
| 17 | these actions were stopped. And today's
|
| 18 | consumers save billions of dollars because of
|
| 19 | those enforcement actions.
|
| 20 | Policing exclusionary conduct
|
| 21 | by branded pharmaceutical companies could not
|
| 22 | be a greater priority. In the next four
|
| 23 | years, over $60 billion of branded
|
| 24 | pharmaceuticals will go off patent.
|
| 25 | Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical industry |
14
| 1 | offers many opportunities for dominant
|
| 2 | branded firms to manipulate a highly complex
|
| 3 | regulatory system to secure monopoly profits,
|
| 4 | not through superior foresight, industry, and
|
| 5 | innovations, but by finding loopholes to
|
| 6 | delay competition.
|
| 7 | Now, let's start off with why
|
| 8 | pharmaceuticals are different. Now, my
|
| 9 | colleagues on the panel today are going to
|
| 10 | talk about the need for simple rules.
|
| 11 | They're going to talk about the need for
|
| 12 | going and creating bright-line tests so it
|
| 13 | will be easier for their business people to
|
| 14 | do what they're supposed to do, compete in
|
| 15 | the marketplace. As an antitrust
|
| 16 | practitioner, I can appreciate their
|
| 17 | perspective.
|
| 18 | However, I think that the
|
| 19 | Commission and the Antitrust Division should
|
| 20 | be extremely cautious about simple rules for
|
| 21 | dominant firms. As Justice Scalia has
|
| 22 | observed, the conduct of a dominant firm is
|
| 23 | viewed through a special lens. Behavior that
|
| 24 | might otherwise not be of concern under the
|
| 25 | antitrust laws can take on exclusionary |
15
| 1 | connotations when practiced by the
|
| 2 | monopolist.
|
| 3 | Now, I think there are four
|
| 4 | factors in the pharmaceutical industry that
|
| 5 | should make people cautious about bright-line
|
| 6 | rules in this industry. First,
|
| 7 | pharmaceuticals are heavily regulated; and as
|
| 8 | my testimony sets forward, this provides a
|
| 9 | remarkable number of opportunities for
|
| 10 | engaging in what's been called by the FTC
|
| 11 | cheap exclusion.
|
| 12 | Second, who is the buyer?
|
| 13 | Now, knowing who the buyer is is critical to
|
| 14 | defining markets and determining market power
|
| 15 | and also oftentimes to determine whether or
|
| 16 | not certain parties have standing. But in
|
| 17 | the pharmaceutical industry is the ultimate
|
| 18 | buyer the consumer, the insurance company,
|
| 19 | the pharmaceutical benefit manager, the
|
| 20 | physician who prescribes the drugs, or a
|
| 21 | combination of all of these?
|
| 22 | Third, pharmaceuticals have
|
| 23 | high fixed costs but very low average
|
| 24 | variable costs. And so when my colleagues
|
| 25 | today go and talk about bright-line rules for |
16
| 1 | predatory pricing, those might not apply that
|
| 2 | well in a setting with that kind of cost
|
| 3 | structure.
|
| 4 | Then finally, forms of
|
| 5 | distribution are complex. Pharmaceuticals
|
| 6 | are distributed through all these numerous
|
| 7 | different intermediaries, and not all
|
| 8 | distribution mechanisms are the same. Maybe
|
| 9 | in the questioning period we'll go and talk
|
| 10 | about distribution exclusivity cases where I
|
| 11 | can address some of these ideas.
|
| 12 | Now, I want to talk today
|
| 13 | about two form -- fortunately through a
|
| 14 | combination of the FTC's and State Attorneys
|
| 15 | General enforcement actions, the FTC's
|
| 16 | advocacy to Congress, Congressional
|
| 17 | legislation, many of the recipe -- the recipe
|
| 18 | book for anticompetitive conduct by dominant
|
| 19 | pharmaceutical companies has basically been
|
| 20 | thrown out. But like all good cooks, the
|
| 21 | pharmaceutical companies have come up with
|
| 22 | new forms of anticompetitive conduct, and I
|
| 23 | wanted to talk about two of them today to
|
| 24 | illustrate the importance of a couple things,
|
| 25 | the importance of antitrust enforcement, the |
17
| 1 | importance of a balanced rule of reason
|
| 2 | analysis in looking at exclusionary conduct
|
| 3 | and staying away from per se bright-line
|
| 4 | rules. And those two types of conduct are
|
| 5 | product line extensions and abuse of the
|
| 6 | regulatory process.
|
| 7 | Now, let me explain product
|
| 8 | line extensions. As in any other area, there
|
| 9 | are changes in products. We all try to
|
| 10 | improve our products. One of the key things
|
| 11 | to remember here is that for a generic firm
|
| 12 | to enter, it is essential for there to be a
|
| 13 | branded firm that is listed and been approved
|
| 14 | by the Food and Drug Administration. And the
|
| 15 | way this process almost invariably works is
|
| 16 | that the generic firm goes and copies a
|
| 17 | branded drug. The branded drug goes off
|
| 18 | patent or the generic firm prevails in patent
|
| 19 | litigation, and then the generic firm enters.
|
| 20 | But sometimes the product
|
| 21 | line extensions can have anticompetitive
|
| 22 | effects. The FTC recognized this in the
|
| 23 | merger of Cima and Cephalon. Cephalon made a
|
| 24 | branded drug that was used to treat pain when
|
| 25 | you underwent cancer treatments. It was |
18
| 1 | acquiring Cima which was developing an
|
| 2 | alternative product. The FTC uncovered in
|
| 3 | the course of its investigation that part of
|
| 4 | the reason for the acquisition was a
|
| 5 | product-switching plan by Cephalon. They
|
| 6 | planned, once they acquired Cima, to go and
|
| 7 | take the Cephalon product out of the market,
|
| 8 | to delist it. And in fact, that would have
|
| 9 | prevented generic firms from being able to
|
| 10 | enter the market for this drug.
|
| 11 | In order to resolve the
|
| 12 | competitive concerns posed by this merger,
|
| 13 | the FTC required Cephalon to sponsor generic
|
| 14 | entry on the form of that drug that it
|
| 15 | manufactured.
|
| 16 | Now, if you were to read one
|
| 17 | case in the area of pharmaceutical antitrust,
|
| 18 | I suggest you read the case of Abbott versus
|
| 19 | Teva. Now, this case will remind you of the
|
| 20 | cartoon in Peanuts where Linus keeps coming
|
| 21 | up to try to kick the football. And every
|
| 22 | time Linus goes and tries to kick the
|
| 23 | football, Lucy picks up the football, and he
|
| 24 | misses it and falls flat on his back.
|
| 25 | There's a drug called Tricor |
19
| 1 | which is used to lower cholesterol. It's am
|
| 2 | almost billion dollar drug. Impax and Teva
|
| 3 | were developing a generic alternative. Each
|
| 4 | time they were poised to enter, the branded
|
| 5 | pharmaceutical manufacturer made some small
|
| 6 | change to the product, thus preventing them
|
| 7 | from being able to enter. The last change
|
| 8 | was changing the product from a capsule
|
| 9 | version to a tablet version. The tablet
|
| 10 | version was supposedly superior because it
|
| 11 | didn't have to be taken with food.
|
| 12 | But Abbott didn't just change
|
| 13 | the product. After the tablet formulation
|
| 14 | was approved, it stopped selling the Tricor
|
| 15 | capsules. It bought up all the excess Tricor
|
| 16 | capsules. And then there's this important
|
| 17 | register. It's called the National Drug Data
|
| 18 | File. And the only way you can get a
|
| 19 | generic drug into the market is if it's
|
| 20 | listed in the NDDF. And what Abbott did is
|
| 21 | it listed -- changed the code for Tricor
|
| 22 | capsules in the National Drug Data File to
|
| 23 | obsolete.
|
| 24 | Anyway, so let's go to the
|
| 25 | litigation. Abbott and Teva sued, along with |
20
| 1 | a group of buyers of drugs. And the
|
| 2 | defendants basically say, you know, this is a
|
| 3 | product improvement. There is no role for
|
| 4 | antitrust here. There is a per se legal
|
| 5 | rule. In order to demonstrate a violation,
|
| 6 | they would have to show that quote: The
|
| 7 | innovator knew before introducing the
|
| 8 | improvement into the market that it was
|
| 9 | absolutely no better than the prior version,
|
| 10 | and that the only purpose of the innovation
|
| 11 | was to eliminate the complementary product of
|
| 12 | a rival. That was the standard articulated
|
| 13 | by Abbott.
|
| 14 | And you know, there was case
|
| 15 | law that supported Abbott's position, though
|
| 16 | not in the pharmaceutical industry. Now,
|
| 17 | rather than adopting the rule of a per se
|
| 18 | legality, the Court went back to the test
|
| 19 | articulated by the D.C. Circuit in Microsoft
|
| 20 | which suggests a rule of reason balancing
|
| 21 | test. And it said the per se rule as
|
| 22 | proposed by the defendants presupposes an
|
| 23 | open market where the merits of any new
|
| 24 | product can be tested by unfettered consumer
|
| 25 | choice. But here, consumers were not |
21
| 1 | presented with a choice between the products.
|
| 2 | Instead, they eliminated that choice by
|
| 3 | removing the old formulations of the
|
| 4 | products.
|
| 5 | Now, I know my colleagues on
|
| 6 | the panel, their hair is about to stand up
|
| 7 | at this point because what this Court has
|
| 8 | basically suggested is that there is a duty
|
| 9 | to deal. That a dominant firm in some sense
|
| 10 | has some kind of obligation, a duty to deal,
|
| 11 | with its rivals. How could that be? Well,
|
| 12 | let's see what the Court said.
|
| 13 | It said, A co-monopolist is
|
| 14 | not free to take certain actions that a
|
| 15 | company in a competitive or even
|
| 16 | oligopolistic market may take because there
|
| 17 | is no market restraint on a monopolist's
|
| 18 | behavior, harkening back to Justice Scalia's
|
| 19 | idea that I mentioned before.
|
| 20 | So in this case where the
|
| 21 | dominant firm went beyond a simple product
|
| 22 | innovation, but also created obstacles for
|
| 23 | the other firms to effectively enter the
|
| 24 | market, that was a violation.
|
| 25 | Now, there's a similar case |
22
| 1 | in the E.U. and in Canada involving Astra Zeneca,
|
| 2 | the drug Lobec. In this case violations were
|
| 3 | found in both of those jurisdictions. In
|
| 4 | that case what happened was as the patents on
|
| 5 | the drug were expiring, Astra Zeneca filed
|
| 6 | for additional patents, but these were
|
| 7 | patents that really weren't used on improving
|
| 8 | the drug. These were just additional patents
|
| 9 | to create the additional obstacles. And
|
| 10 | again, antitrust violations were found.
|
| 11 | The most interesting case
|
| 12 | here is a case that was just filed in the
|
| 13 | past year or so, and it involves the very
|
| 14 | well-known conversion of the drug Prilosec to
|
| 15 | Nexium as Prilosec was losing its patent
|
| 16 | protection. This again involved Astra
|
| 17 | Zeneca. This is something like a $4
|
| 18 | billion-a-year drug.
|
| 19 | In the alleged
|
| 20 | anticompetitive conduct it was said, up to 18
|
| 21 | months before Astra Zeneca was about to lose
|
| 22 | exclusivity it stopped promoting the drug,
|
| 23 | and instead, started to make negative claims
|
| 24 | about the drug. Now, I don't know about you
|
| 25 | or me, but I just don't know when people |
23
| 1 | start making negative claims about their
|
| 2 | drugs.
|
| 3 | More important than just
|
| 4 | creating Nexium, they also effectively
|
| 5 | withdrew Prilosec from the market, so it was
|
| 6 | impossible for managed care organizations to
|
| 7 | go and sort of continue to contract for
|
| 8 | Prilosec.
|
| 9 | And so when generic Prilosec
|
| 10 | was about to arise, there was no possibility
|
| 11 | for it to substitute for branded Prilosec.
|
| 12 | And one of the most
|
| 13 | interesting issues and maybe something worth
|
| 14 | discussing later on is the fact, as alleged,
|
| 15 | that Nexium was no improvement on Prilosec.
|
| 16 | Let's go on to the issue of
|
| 17 | petitioning and litigation. You know, one of
|
| 18 | the most important achievements of the
|
| 19 | Federal Trade Commission has been the focus
|
| 20 | on sham petitioning and the use of regulatory
|
| 21 | processes to create competitive harm.
|
| 22 | Probably the case in which they've brought
|
| 23 | the most consumer benefits was the Unocal
|
| 24 | case in which it attacked sham petitioning by
|
| 25 | Unocal before the California Resources Board |
24
| 1 | that costs consumers in California over $500
|
| 2 | million annually.
|
| 3 | Sham petitioning is a serious
|
| 4 | problem. As the FTC's recent staff report on
|
| 5 | the Noerr-Pennington Doctrine observed: One
|
| 6 | of the most effective ways for parties to
|
| 7 | acquire or maintain market power is through
|
| 8 | the abuse of governmental processes. The
|
| 9 | cost of the party engaging in such abuse is
|
| 10 | typically minimal, while the anticompetitive
|
| 11 | effects resulting from such abuse are often
|
| 12 | significant and durable.
|
| 13 | Anticompetitive conduct
|
| 14 | through regulatory abuse can be especially
|
| 15 | pernicious if, God forbid, Kodak or GE were
|
| 16 | to engage in any kind of abusive conduct.
|
| 17 | If they exploited their dominant power, it
|
| 18 | would be short lived. Why? Because there are
|
| 19 | numerous firms poised to go and battle them
|
| 20 | for that role of king of the hill. But when
|
| 21 | your job as king of the hill was gained
|
| 22 | through abuse of the regulatory process, no
|
| 23 | natural force can displace you. That's why
|
| 24 | abuse of the regulatory systems is so
|
| 25 | pernicious. |
25
| 1 | This is especially the case
|
| 2 | in the pharmaceutical industry. The cases I
|
| 3 | identified at the beginning of my testimony
|
| 4 | were cases which were largely based on abuse
|
| 5 | of the regulatory system.
|
| 6 | Almost 30 years ago, Judge
|
| 7 | Bork observed that predation by abuse of
|
| 8 | governmental procedures, including
|
| 9 | administrative and judicial processes,
|
| 10 | presents an increasingly dangerous threat to
|
| 11 | competition.
|
| 12 | No statement could be more on
|
| 13 | point for the anticompetitive conduct in the
|
| 14 | pharmaceutical industry and the practice of
|
| 15 | so-called citizen petitions. The FDA, like
|
| 16 | many regulatory agencies, offers the
|
| 17 | opportunity for citizens to petition them to
|
| 18 | raise questions about safety and efficacy and
|
| 19 | other issues. And that process is obviously
|
| 20 | well intentioned, but it's abused to an
|
| 21 | increasingly significant extent.
|
| 22 | What happens is again, when a
|
| 23 | generic company is poised to enter the
|
| 24 | market, the brand company will file a
|
| 25 | frivolous petition on the eve of FDA |
26
| 1 | approval. That may be despite the fact that
|
| 2 | the FDA may have granted a tentative
|
| 3 | approval, that maybe despite the fact that
|
| 4 | similar petitions have already been filed.
|
| 5 | The brand strategy is just simply delay the
|
| 6 | generic drug from the market. And you can
|
| 7 | imagine when you're talking about drugs in
|
| 8 | which the amount of profits amount to 10 to
|
| 9 | $20 million a day, this could be a very
|
| 10 | attractive opportunity.
|
| 11 | The FDA citizen petition
|
| 12 | process provides significant opportunities for
|
| 13 | deception. There are no requirements for
|
| 14 | proof of the accusations made in the
|
| 15 | petition. No requirements for certification
|
| 16 | of the accuracy of the information. There
|
| 17 | are no penalties for inaccurate or improper
|
| 18 | filings. There are no limits on the number
|
| 19 | of filings that may be filed. Some petitions
|
| 20 | contain little or no evidence or rely on
|
| 21 | obsolete, irrelevant, or erroneous
|
| 22 | information.
|
| 23 | The FDA has even noted the
|
| 24 | fact that they've seen several examples of
|
| 25 | citizen petitions seemingly designed to delay |
27
| 1 | the approval of generic approval.
|
| 2 | So let's look at the numbers.
|
| 3 | You know, if I wanted to make it to Wrigley
|
| 4 | Field this spring, if I wanted to join the
|
| 5 | Cubs for spring training, I'd want to have a
|
| 6 | pretty good batting average. Otherwise, they
|
| 7 | wouldn't look at me.
|
| 8 | What's the batting average on
|
| 9 | citizen petitions? Since the Medicare
|
| 10 | Monitorization Act was passed in 2003, there
|
| 11 | have been 45 citizen petitions filed
|
| 12 | challenging the conduct trying to delay the
|
| 13 | entry of generic drugs. 45. 21 of these
|
| 14 | have been resolved. One has been resolved in
|
| 15 | the favor of the petitioner. One. 20 have
|
| 16 | been denied.
|
| 17 | Now, if I'm batting at .05
|
| 18 | percent, I'm not going to get much of a
|
| 19 | try-out at Wrigley Field this spring. None
|
| 20 | of the last-minute -- many of these petitions
|
| 21 | were filed within the four-month period prior
|
| 22 | -- half of them were filed in the four-month
|
| 23 | prior period to the entry of the drug. Did
|
| 24 | any of those succeed? None. Not one.
|
| 25 | Well, how much do they delay |
28
| 1 | things? Those late-filed petitions delayed
|
| 2 | things an average of ten months. And in one
|
| 3 | case, the amount of delay cost consumers an
|
| 4 | estimated $7 million a year.
|
| 5 | Is this a small problem?
|
| 6 | No. According to the statistics of the FDA,
|
| 7 | there's been a 50 percent increase in the
|
| 8 | number of citizen petitions they have
|
| 9 | received. And there are about 170 citizen
|
| 10 | petitions pending compared to only 90 in
|
| 11 | 1999.
|
| 12 | Now, one of the most
|
| 13 | illuminating observations of the FTC report
|
| 14 | on the Noerr-Pennington Doctrine was its
|
| 15 | observation about how serial sham litigation
|
| 16 | conduct should be analyzed. I think the FTC
|
| 17 | should go and apply the ideas that it has
|
| 18 | and the expertise it's developed, both in
|
| 19 | that report and in its enforcement action in
|
| 20 | Unocal to give a very serious look at the
|
| 21 | citizen petition process. Let me conclude.
|
| 22 | Antitrust plays a vital role
|
| 23 | in maintaining rivalry as the lone star of
|
| 24 | the marketplace. Competition is critically
|
| 25 | important where many of the factors |
29
| 1 | identified earlier can forestall competition.
|
| 2 | The FTC, State Attorneys
|
| 3 | General, and private antitrust lawyers have
|
| 4 | played an important role in protecting
|
| 5 | pharmaceutical markets from artificial
|
| 6 | barriers to competition, and I hope these
|
| 7 | hearings keep Section 2 as a robust statute
|
| 8 | so that it can continue to be used to
|
| 9 | protect the interest of consumers and
|
| 10 | competitors in this vital market. Thank you.
|
| 11 | (Applause)
|
| 12 | MR. TARONJI: Thank you,
|
| 13 | David. Our next speaker is Patrick Sheller.
|
| 14 | Patrick is the chief compliance officer for
|
| 15 | Eastman Kodak Company. In that capacity he
|
| 16 | is responsible for Kodak's code of conduct
|
| 17 | and internal investigations.
|
| 18 | Prior to his current
|
| 19 | assignment, Patrick held a variety of
|
| 20 | business positions and was Kodak's chief
|
| 21 | antitrust counsel and also was involved in
|
| 22 | legal matters in Europe.
|
| 23 | Prior to Kodak he was in
|
| 24 | private practice with a law firm that is now
|
| 25 | known as McKenna, Long & Aldridge, and is a |
30
| 1 | former Federal Trade Commission attorney,
|
| 2 | having worked in the Bureau of Competition
|
| 3 | and as attorney adviser to Chairman Daniel
|
| 4 | Oliver. He is a graduate of St. Lawrence
|
| 5 | University and the Albany Law School at Union
|
| 6 | University. Patrick.
|
| 7 | MR. SHELLER: I want to
|
| 8 | thank the Department of Justice and the FTC
|
| 9 | for the opportunity to speak to you today.
|
| 10 | It's an important time in antitrust
|
| 11 | law for our economy, and it's a particularly
|
| 12 | important time for Kodak. I suspect one
|
| 13 | of the reasons we were invited to participate
|
| 14 | in these hearings is Kodak's well documented
|
| 15 | experience with the Section 2 enforcement
|
| 16 | which began in 1921 when an investigation by
|
| 17 | the Department of Justice was settled through
|
| 18 | a consent decree which prohibited Kodak, among
|
| 19 | other things, from selling a fighting
|
| 20 | brand of consumer film, also known as
|
| 21 | private-label film.
|
| 22 | In 1954 we settled an
|
| 23 | investigation with the Department of Justice.
|
| 24 | This matter involved alleged tying of consumer
|
| 25 | color negative film with photo processing |
31
| 1 | services. Under this consent decree we
|
| 2 | were prohibited from selling these two
|
| 3 | items under a single price.
|
| 4 | In 1979 our luck turned a
|
| 5 | bit. We benefitted from a primarily favorable
|
| 6 | ruling by the Second Circuit in the Berkey
|
| 7 | Photo case where one of our competitors
|
| 8 | challenged Kodak's introduction of the 110
|
| 9 | photographic system that included a camera,
|
| 10 | specially formatted film, and a new photo
|
| 11 | processing service.
|
| 12 | One of the key rulings in
|
| 13 | that case was that a monopolist has no
|
| 14 | obligation to predisclose new products to a
|
| 15 | competitor. And, to the extent that a
|
| 16 | monopolist engages in truthful advertising,
|
| 17 | that conduct does not offend Section 2.
|
| 18 | In 1991 our luck turned in
|
| 19 | the other direction again with the Supreme
|
| 20 | Court's decision in the ITS v. Kodak
|
| 21 | case. This was an action brought by
|
| 22 | independent service organizations that were
|
| 23 | competing against Kodak in the service of
|
| 24 | photocopiers and micrographics units. It
|
| 25 | was in the ITS case that the court established |
32
| 1 | the so-called single-brand derivative
|
| 2 | aftermarket; the notion being that once a
|
| 3 | customer chooses to purchase an expensive
|
| 4 | item of capital equipment, they're now locked
|
| 5 | into that particular brand or manufacturer.
|
| 6 | Whether or not that manufacturer has
|
| 7 | market power in the primary market for
|
| 8 | photocopiers, for example, was determined to
|
| 9 | be irrelevant to the Supreme Court. The ITS
|
| 10 | case went back to the trial court on remand,
|
| 11 | and I'll speak more to the trial in a minute.
|
| 12 | In 1994 Kodak challenged some
|
| 13 | aspects of the 1921 and 1954 consent decrees.
|
| 14 | We were successful in overturning the private
|
| 15 | label restriction and the prohibition on
|
| 16 | linking film with photo finishing sales,
|
| 17 | primarily because we were able to demonstrate
|
| 18 | to the District Court and to the Second Circuit
|
| 19 | that market conditions had changed
|
| 20 | significantly.
|
| 21 | By 1994, Kodak was
|
| 22 | competing on a global basis with a number of
|
| 23 | foreign suppliers as opposed to the market
|
| 24 | conditions that existed when these consent
|
| 25 | decrees were entered into. |
33
| 1 | Finally, in 1996 the
|
| 2 | Ninth Circuit heard Kodak's appeal
|
| 3 | of the jury verdict in the ITS case. The
|
| 4 | jury found that we had engaged in an unlawful
|
| 5 | refusal to deal by refusing to provide
|
| 6 | patented and copyrighted parts and copyrighted
|
| 7 | diagnostic software and manuals to ISO's.
|
| 8 | The key ruling in that case,
|
| 9 | for purposes of my remarks today, was
|
| 10 | that an IP owner faces restrictions on its
|
| 11 | ability to refuse to deal with ISOs by refusing
|
| 12 | to license its IP.
|
| 13 | The Ninth Circuit picked up
|
| 14 | on the First Circuit's decision in the Data
|
| 15 | General case in holding that there is a
|
| 16 | presumption in favor of an IP owner, that
|
| 17 | it has a legitimate business justification
|
| 18 | for refusing to deal with a rival. But that
|
| 19 | presumption can be overcome by evidence that
|
| 20 | the IP owner had an anticompetitive intent. The
|
| 21 | 9th circuit's ruling essentially opens the door
|
| 22 | to ISO's to come up with evidence in the form of
|
| 23 | internal documents showing that the IP owner
|
| 24 | was trying to keep out competition through
|
| 25 | its decision to refuse to deal. |
34
| 1 | Now, the history of Kodak's
|
| 2 | experience with Section 2 parallels in many
|
| 3 | ways the evolution of our company, our
|
| 4 | technology, and our business model.
|
| 5 | Beginning in the 1880's and through the
|
| 6 | 70's, the focus of our business was on
|
| 7 | consumables. We primarily sold film
|
| 8 | products, paper products, and chemicals.
|
| 9 | We engaged in the sort of razor/razor blade
|
| 10 | model of selling cameras in order to generate
|
| 11 | more film sales.
|
| 12 | The company began to
|
| 13 | diversify its portfolio in the late 60's to
|
| 14 | 1970's, and we began to offer more expensive
|
| 15 | items of capital equipment such as
|
| 16 | photocopiers, micrographics equipment, and
|
| 17 | graphic arts equipment. And in this sense
|
| 18 | our business model began to change to
|
| 19 | offering hardware plus aftermarket service.
|
| 20 | It was in this context that the ITS case
|
| 21 | arose.
|
| 22 | We are now in the process of
|
| 23 | a monumental shift in the business model of
|
| 24 | our company as we try to become a digital
|
| 25 | company as opposed to an analog technology player. |
35
| 1 | The focus of our business going forward is
|
| 2 | going to be on selling solutions. Solution
|
| 3 | selling is very common in the digital world
|
| 4 | where companies will bundle a portfolio of
|
| 5 | offerings that include hardware, software,
|
| 6 | consumables, consulting services, and
|
| 7 | aftermarket service into a single price to
|
| 8 | sell to customers who demand an end-to-end
|
| 9 | solution.
|
| 10 | Our sales focus going forward
|
| 11 | will be on digital products such as photo
|
| 12 | printer kiosks, image centers. We announced
|
| 13 | last week the introduction of a new line of
|
| 14 | consumer ink-jet printers, which means Kodak will
|
| 15 | now be competing in a new market. We will also
|
| 16 | offer Digital cameras, media ink, and so forth.
|
| 17 | Elements of the old
|
| 18 | business models still remain at Kodak. We
|
| 19 | will continue to sell film. But our focus
|
| 20 | will be on solution sales, and there will be
|
| 21 | be a real emphasis within the company on the
|
| 22 | ability to sell in this environment.
|
| 23 | We face a number of
|
| 24 | challenges as we try to participate in the
|
| 25 | digital world. Some critical success |
36
| 1 | factors to our new digital model are, first
|
| 2 | of all, that we rapidly innovate and
|
| 3 | develop new technology to commercialize
|
| 4 | new products. Digital companies constantly
|
| 5 | introduce new versions of their products.
|
| 6 | We have to keep pace in this fast-moving
|
| 7 | environment. And in that sense, intellectual
|
| 8 | property has become increasingly important to
|
| 9 | Kodak.
|
| 10 | We need to be able to
|
| 11 | protect our research and development
|
| 12 | investments, wherever possible, through patents
|
| 13 | and copyrights, and we need to be able to
|
| 14 | protect these assets in a way that doesn't
|
| 15 | offend the antitrust laws.
|
| 16 | One of our key strategies
|
| 17 | going forward is to monetize our intellectual
|
| 18 | properties. Kodak has, for the last
|
| 19 | several years, entered into numerous
|
| 20 | licensing agreements with other digital
|
| 21 | players in the industry, and we need to be
|
| 22 | able to go about that licensing activity
|
| 23 | without fear of antitrust concerns, as
|
| 24 | I'll talk about in a few minutes.
|
| 25 | And finally, as I mentioned, |
37
| 1 | solution selling is critical to our success
|
| 2 | in the digital world. A good example is
|
| 3 | our graphic communications business which
|
| 4 | sells graphic solutions to printing firms.
|
| 5 | These solutions include software, work-flow
|
| 6 | software, hardware, consumables, consulting
|
| 7 | services, and aftermarket service.
|
| 8 | So what are some of the
|
| 9 | Section 2 impediments to our success in this
|
| 10 | new digital world? First of all, we
|
| 11 | would encourage the antitrust agencies and
|
| 12 | the courts to recognize the importance of
|
| 13 | market changes. As we saw with our attempt
|
| 14 | to overturn the 1921 and 1954 consent
|
| 15 | decrees, we were forced to litigate with the
|
| 16 | Department of Justice over the issue of
|
| 17 | whether Kodak was competing in a worldwide
|
| 18 | market versus a domestic market.
|
| 19 | And to the extent that
|
| 20 | further challenges arise to our practices in
|
| 21 | the film environment, we would encourage the
|
| 22 | agencies and the courts to recognize the
|
| 23 | substantial influence of digital technologies
|
| 24 | on markets that were previously dominated
|
| 25 | by film. |
38
| 1 | As we saw literally overnight
|
| 2 | earlier in this decade, our film business
|
| 3 | began to decline dramatically in the year
|
| 4 | 2001. We initially thought it was a result
|
| 5 | of reduced demand following the 9/11 attacks,
|
| 6 | but the market never came back. It was because
|
| 7 | many customers had decided to convert from film
|
| 8 | to digital. And many customers that make this
|
| 9 | conversion never come back to film.
|
| 10 | Another impediment to our
|
| 11 | success in the digital world relates to the
|
| 12 | antitrust line between tying and bundling. This
|
| 13 | line is becoming increasingly blurred as a
|
| 14 | result of the LePage's and other decisions, which
|
| 15 | I'll speak to more in a few minutes.
|
| 16 | Finally, obstacles to our
|
| 17 | ability to monetize our intellectual property
|
| 18 | investments exist in the form of cases like the
|
| 19 | Ninth Circuit's decision in the ITS case and
|
| 20 | precedents in the European Union such as
|
| 21 | the McGill case and the INS Health case where
|
| 22 | the Commission required compulsory licensing
|
| 23 | licensing by intellectual property owners.
|
| 24 | Let me first turn to the
|
| 25 | LePage's decision and the uncertainty that |
39
| 1 | case has left companies like Kodak with. While
|
| 2 | the Third Circuit had an opportunity to
|
| 3 | clarify the application of Section 2 in the
|
| 4 | area of bundled discounts, in our view it
|
| 5 | squandered that opportunity by deciding the
|
| 6 | case on its narrow set of facts. The court
|
| 7 | ruled said that 3M's practice of bundling its
|
| 8 | branded Scotch tape with both private-label
|
| 9 | 3M tape and with other 3M products caused
|
| 10 | injury to its competitor, LePage's, and
|
| 11 | therefore offended Section 2.
|
| 12 | The only parameters that
|
| 13 | we are able to draw from the LePage's decision
|
| 14 | in terms of an alleged monopolist's ability
|
| 15 | to engage in pricing activities are, first of
|
| 16 | all, that single-product volume discounts are
|
| 17 | permissible. The court made that clear. But
|
| 18 | what's at risk following the 3M/LePage's
|
| 19 | decision, are discounts linking products
|
| 20 | across multiple markets where an alleged
|
| 21 | dominant product is involved, and also
|
| 22 | discounts linking a dominant product
|
| 23 | with others across a single product
|
| 24 | line, such as the linking branded and
|
| 25 | private-label tape. We are left with |
40
| 1 | no coherent standard with which to
|
| 2 | evaluate bundled pricing under the
|
| 3 | LePage's decision.
|
| 4 | We would submit there were
|
| 5 | better alternative paths that the Third
|
| 6 | Circuit could have taken in evaluating the
|
| 7 | case against 3M. The Eighth Circuit's
|
| 8 | decision in Concord Boat applied the Brooke
|
| 9 | Group decision by the Supreme Court to find
|
| 10 | that as long as single-product discounts are
|
| 11 | above cost, they should not be considered
|
| 12 | exclusionary under Section 2.
|
| 13 | It would have also been helpful
|
| 14 | if the court had given some thought to the
|
| 15 | Ortho Diagnostic's Systems case by the Southern
|
| 16 | District of New York where the court articulated
|
| 17 | its analysis of the alleged bundling by asking
|
| 18 | whether an equally efficient competitor to the
|
| 19 | monopolist could profitably match the bundled
|
| 20 | price the in the market. That would have
|
| 21 | been an arguably more rational test to apply.
|
| 22 | While we could previously
|
| 23 | rely on the very clear distinction between
|
| 24 | tying on the one hand where a monopolist
|
| 25 | tries to force the purchase of a second |
41
| 1 | non-monopoly product, we now have to deal with a
|
| 2 | precedent that articulates no coherent standard
|
| 3 | such that bundled discounts now come under scrutiny.
|
| 4 | As I said before, bundling is very important to our
|
| 5 | ability to offer solution sales.
|
| 6 | Turning to the issue of IP
|
| 7 | rights, as I mentioned, a very importantbr>
|
| 8 | strategy of Kodak going forward is our ability
|
| 9 | to monetize our IP portfolio. The Ninth
|
| 10 | Circuit's decision in the ITS case has had a
|
| 11 | a chilling effect on that activity. There thebr>
|
| 12 | Court held that although there is a presumption in
|
| 13 | favor of an IP owner's right to refuse to license
|
| 14 | a competitor, that presumption can be overcome by
|
| 15 | evidence of bad intent. And that evidence can
|
| 16 | take the form of internal company documents.
|
| 17 | We think that the Federal Circuit,
|
| 18 | which considered very similar facts in the Xerox v.
|
| 19 | CSU case got the issue right when it held that in
|
| 20 | the absence of tying, fraud or sham litigation,
|
| 21 | it's not appropriate to inquire into the IP owner's
|
| 22 | subjective motivations for asserting a statutory right
|
| 23 | to exclude. The Xerox court held that the same
|
| 24 | rationale would apply to asserting copyright
|
| 25 | protection as the basis for a refusal to deal. |
42
| 1 | As a result, we have a
|
| 2 | clear split among the circuits that has
|
| 3 | created a great deal of uncertainty on the
|
| 4 | part of the IP owners and companies that
|
| 5 | provide aftermarket service.
|
| 6 | Where does the uncertainty
|
| 7 | in these two areas leave Kodak and other
|
| 8 | companies? First, if we're successful with our
|
| 9 | digital strategy, and we're able to achieve a
|
| 10 | leading market position in some of the new
|
| 11 | digital markets where we participate, our ability
|
| 12 | to offer competitive bundled pricing could be
|
| 13 | constrained by the LePage's decision. As I
|
| 14 | said, bundled pricing is really the essence
|
| 15 | of solution selling.
|
| 16 | Second, notwithstanding a
|
| 17 | lack of market power in the primary equipment
|
| 18 | markets in which we compete, we still face
|
| 19 | potential challenges by ISO's that can allege that
|
| 20 | Kodak dominates a single brand aftermarket
|
| 21 | for a particular line of equipment. Such ISOs
|
| 22 | will try to require us to license or sell our
|
| 23 | valuable intellectual property.
|
| 24 | Let me offer a few examples
|
| 25 | of the dilemmas these ambiguities can create, |
43
| 1 | and these are hypothetical examples. First,
|
| 2 | sell a line of photo kiosks that you may have
|
| 3 | seen at a number of retailers. A question
|
| 4 | arises as to whether Kodak can offer retailers
|
| 5 | bundled discounts on the kiosks, our paper
|
| 6 | that runs through these kiosks and the
|
| 7 | aftermarket service. Could we also include
|
| 8 | digital cameras in that bundle when we sell
|
| 9 | to retailers? Could Kodak refuse to license
|
| 10 | our valuable diagnostic software on these
|
| 11 | photo kiosks to an ISO that wishes to compete
|
| 12 | with us?
|
| 13 | Turning to our intellectual
|
| 14 | property strategy. We are in the process of
|
| 15 | entering into licensing agreements with a
|
| 16 | number of companies that we believe have
|
| 17 | infringed our patent portfolio in the digital
|
| 18 | camera area. The question arises whether,
|
| 19 | in approaching a particular company we
|
| 20 | believe violates our patents, can we refuse
|
| 21 | to license the companies' rights in our patents
|
| 22 | simply because they are competitors. And does
|
| 23 | that situation get any worse because we've got
|
| 24 | an internal document suggesting that a reason
|
| 25 | for refusing the license was to gain an upper |
44
| 1 | hand in the marketplace.
|
| 2 | Could we, in licensing to
|
| 3 | other digital camera sellers, bundle Kodak
|
| 4 | software that allows customers to view their
|
| 5 | images on a PC?
|
| 6 | We offer an on-line photo
|
| 7 | service where you can upload your photos and
|
| 8 | order prints or order prints on different items
|
| 9 | like T-shirts and coffee mugs. This is called
|
| 10 | the Kodak Easy Share Gallery. The question arises
|
| 11 | whether in the event we were to gain a leading
|
| 12 | market position with our Kodak Photo Gallery,
|
| 13 | we could say to our customers who agree to
|
| 14 | store a fixed number of images on our site
|
| 15 | that they will get a discount on their
|
| 16 | prints?
|
| 17 | And finally with respect to
|
| 18 | our graphics business, which I mentioned is
|
| 19 | very much focused trying to meet the end to
|
| 20 | end work-flow demands of our customers, are
|
| 21 | there antitrust concerns with our selling
|
| 22 | graphic communications equipment, software,
|
| 23 | consumables, consulting services, and
|
| 24 | aftermarket services as a bundle? Should it
|
| 25 | make a difference that our customers demand |
45
| 1 | such solution sales?
|
| 2 | These are some of the issues
|
| 3 | that we grapple with in light of the
|
| 4 | uncertainty under Section 2 that I've
|
| 5 | outlined, and I'll look forward to further
|
| 6 | discussion on these and other issues when we
|
| 7 | get to the questioning period.
|
| 8 | (Applause)
|
| 9 | MR. TARONJI: Thank you,
|
| 10 | Patrick. Our next speaker is Ron Stern.
|
| 11 | Ron is the vice president and senior
|
| 12 | competition counsel for the General Electric
|
| 13 | Company. Ron received his AB from Brown
|
| 14 | University and his law degree from Harvard.
|
| 15 | He clerked for Judge Harold
|
| 16 | Leventhal of the U.S. Court of Appeals for
|
| 17 | the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Potter
|
| 18 | Stewart of the U.S. Supreme Court. He was
|
| 19 | in private practice with Hughes, Hubbard &
|
| 20 | Reid and was a partner with Arnold & Porter.
|
| 21 | In addition, he was the
|
| 22 | special assistant to the Assistant Attorney
|
| 23 | General for the Criminal Division of the U.S.
|
| 24 | Department of Justice. Ron.
|
| 25 | MR. STERN: I'd like to |
46
| 1 | begin by thanking the Antitrust Division and
|
| 2 | the Federal Trust Commission for holding
|
| 3 | these hearings and for providing me and
|
| 4 | others with the opportunity to address
|
| 5 | important issues relating to the application
|
| 6 | of the antitrust laws to single-firm conduct.
|
| 7 | In particular, I would like
|
| 8 | to thank the staff at both agencies who have
|
| 9 | organized these hearings and put in the hard
|
| 10 | work required to make them a success.
|
| 11 | I also want to make clear at
|
| 12 | the outset that the views and opinions that I
|
| 13 | am providing today and that are in the
|
| 14 | written slides are my own personal views and
|
| 15 | not those of the General Electric Company or
|
| 16 | of other General Electric officials.
|
| 17 | Let me begin with an
|
| 18 | overview. I want to agree with the heads
|
| 19 | of the two agencies that are hosting these
|
| 20 | hearings, the Assistant Attorney General and
|
| 21 | the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission,
|
| 22 | that it is important to have clear,
|
| 23 | administrable, and objective rules. This is
|
| 24 | a key requirement, something that's really at
|
| 25 | the heart of these hearings. |
47
| 1 | It's important for business
|
| 2 | to avoid chilling procompetitive conduct.
|
| 3 | It's also important for consumers. It's
|
| 4 | important to help avoid inadvertent
|
| 5 | violations and disputes and investigations
|
| 6 | that end up wasting company time and
|
| 7 | resources as well as the time and resources
|
| 8 | of the agencies.
|
| 9 | And finally, it's important
|
| 10 | to reduce the cost of developing and
|
| 11 | implementing business plans to foster
|
| 12 | competition in the marketplace.
|
| 13 | Now increasingly, as the
|
| 14 | economy globalizes, it's not sufficient that
|
| 15 | the U.S. rules are clear. The rules adopted
|
| 16 | by other jurisdictions will, of course, affect
|
| 17 | U.S. commerce. And I do not believe that it
|
| 18 | is surprising or coincidental that the United
|
| 19 | States, European Commission, and the
|
| 20 | International Competition Network, an
|
| 21 | organization formed by, I believe, more than
|
| 22 | 100 competition authorities around the world,
|
| 23 | are all addressing the issue of competition
|
| 24 | standards for single-firm conduct at this
|
| 25 | time. |
48
| 1 | In a global economy this is
|
| 2 | a global issue, not just a United States
|
| 3 | issue; and that's important, particularly for
|
| 4 | companies such as mine, that operate in a
|
| 5 | number of global markets.
|
| 6 | What I'd like to do today is
|
| 7 | walk through from a counseling perspective
|
| 8 | which is a perspective, I see every day,
|
| 9 | and look at areas that could be clarified in
|
| 10 | Section 2.
|
| 11 | First, the issue is what kind
|
| 12 | of rule governs. Is your conduct unilateral,
|
| 13 | single-firm conduct, or is it multi-firm
|
| 14 | conduct? Is it something that Section 1 governs
|
| 15 | or Article 81 in Europe?
|
| 16 | Or is it something that
|
| 17 | Section 2 governs as single-firm conduct or
|
| 18 | Article 82 in Europe?
|
| 19 | The next issue is whether
|
| 20 | there is a threshold solution or a threshold
|
| 21 | screen that makes you comfortable that the
|
| 22 | conduct doesn't violate the law? And one
|
| 23 | important screen under the U.S. law is the
|
| 24 | requirement of monopoly power.
|
| 25 | If you can be sure that your |
49
| 1 | company isn't in that kind of position, it
|
| 2 | doesn't control market prices, then you don't
|
| 3 | have to worry about the nature of the conduct
|
| 4 | and whether the conduct meets or doesn't meet
|
| 5 | any of the different rules that have been
|
| 6 | talked about during these hearings and are
|
| 7 | being discussed today.
|
| 8 | If the threshold isn't met,
|
| 9 | then you have to look at the conduct and
|
| 10 | decide whether the conduct is exclusionary or
|
| 11 | not. And oftentimes what you're looking for
|
| 12 | are clear rules that will guide you to allow
|
| 13 | you to tell your client that they can safely
|
| 14 | pursue X type of conduct because that's in a
|
| 15 | safe harbor or that's clearly not a problem.
|
| 16 | And then why are we going
|
| 17 | through this entire exercise? Well, we're
|
| 18 | going through the exercise basically because
|
| 19 | there are risks and costs if you end up in a
|
| 20 | gray area that someone thinks violates the
|
| 21 | requirements.
|
| 22 | There is the potential for
|
| 23 | government enforcement actions and
|
| 24 | investigations, and in the U.S. for private
|
| 25 | treble damage action. And there are a host |
50
| 1 | of potential consequences, from injunctive
|
| 2 | relief to fines, not in the U.S., but in
|
| 3 | some jurisdictions, to treble damage awards,
|
| 4 | legal fees, and the like.
|
| 5 | So what I'd like to do is
|
| 6 | continue to walk through the issues. One
|
| 7 | issue that reinforces the concern that I'd
|
| 8 | just like to touch upon is the fact that
|
| 9 | jury instructions in the Section 2 area are
|
| 10 | often particularly problematic. I've just
|
| 11 | set some examples up on the screen, but
|
| 12 | basically they involve very general types of
|
| 13 | words. Is the conduct wrongful? Did one
|
| 14 | buy more logs than were necessary or pay a
|
| 15 | higher price than was necessary? Did the
|
| 16 | firm engage in competition on the merits?
|
| 17 | Whatever, again, a jury believes that means.
|
| 18 | All of these things reinforce
|
| 19 | the risk, particularly in the U.S.
|
| 20 | environment, of treble damages and attorneys'
|
| 21 | fees and large litigation costs. You
|
| 22 | basically want to counsel to be in a safe zone
|
| 23 | to avoid having to worry about jury
|
| 24 | instructions.
|
| 25 | So then back to the |
51
| 1 | beginning. Do you know whether you're in the
|
| 2 | single-firm conduct area? We obviously have
|
| 3 | the Copperweld decision and clear law that if
|
| 4 | you're a company and you're dealing with a
|
| 5 | wholly-owned subsidiary, you're one entity,
|
| 6 | and you know that you can't violate Sherman Act
|
| 7 | Section 1 by having an agreement in restraint of
|
| 8 | trade because you don't have two parties. You
|
| 9 | just have one.
|
| 10 | The problem is under
|
| 11 | Copperweld the application is unclear. The
|
| 12 | law in the lower courts is divided as to
|
| 13 | where the line is when you're dealing with
|
| 14 | non-wholly-owned subsidiaries.
|
| 15 | And one important thing that
|
| 16 | the government could do is reinstate the
|
| 17 | guidance that existed in 1988 with the
|
| 18 | antitrust enforcement guidelines for
|
| 19 | international operations. I've included
|
| 20 | that in the slides.
|
| 21 | And the clear guidance that
|
| 22 | was given then, I think, would be important
|
| 23 | to reinstate it, is that whenever you have
|
| 24 | more than 50 percent of the voting securities
|
| 25 | of a company owned by its parent or its |
52
| 1 | sister company, that whole family of
|
| 2 | companies is one economic entity and is
|
| 3 | subject only to Section 2, the single-firm
|
| 4 | conduct section, and not Section 1. That's
|
| 5 | one area in which I think clarity could be
|
| 6 | added.
|
| 7 | Now, if we move beyond, the
|
| 8 | next issue is trying to identify whether your
|
| 9 | company in the particular situation that
|
| 10 | you're facing is subject to Section 2. And
|
| 11 | the first element of Section 2 is having
|
| 12 | monopoly power. The second element relates to
|
| 13 | the conduct. Is there a willful acquisition
|
| 14 | or maintenance of that power which is often
|
| 15 | referred to as engaging in exclusionary
|
| 16 | conduct.
|
| 17 | Now, under United States law
|
| 18 | there is a pretty helpful screen. You have
|
| 19 | to have the power to control market price.
|
| 20 | And in bidding markets, it's clear that if
|
| 21 | there are other credible competitors, you
|
| 22 | generally don't have the power to control
|
| 23 | market prices, even if you have a very large
|
| 24 | share.
|
| 25 | The case law gives some very |
53
| 1 | helpful general rules of thumb. If you have
|
| 2 | more than a 70 percent share, you have to
|
| 3 | look at all of the other factors, but you at
|
| 4 | least know that you're in a danger zone.
|
| 5 | If you have less than a 50
|
| 6 | percent share under the U.S. case law, it's
|
| 7 | very unlikely that you have to worry about
|
| 8 | whether your conduct could be categorized as
|
| 9 | exclusionary.
|
| 10 | Some people point to the fact
|
| 11 | that attempted monopolization can occur at a
|
| 12 | lower market share threshold, but you have
|
| 13 | the very important counseling hook in the
|
| 14 | element of attempted monopolization which is
|
| 15 | the requirement of a dangerous probability of
|
| 16 | achieving monopoly power, which brings you
|
| 17 | right back to the monopoly power test.
|
| 18 | So the key is, and I think
|
| 19 | that's been very helpful, even for successful
|
| 20 | firms, and certainly my company has a number
|
| 21 | of successful businesses, that most
|
| 22 | successful firms simply do not meet the
|
| 23 | monopoly power test under U.S. law. And that
|
| 24 | is helpful in counseling. But there are two
|
| 25 | important howevers that I want to talk |
54
| 1 | about.
|
| 2 | The first is the issue that's
|
| 3 | been discussed that Patrick talked about, the
|
| 4 | treatment of aftermarkets. And the second
|
| 5 | are non-U.S. issues, that there are lower
|
| 6 | dominance thresholds outside the U.S. And
|
| 7 | indeed, there is the curious concept of
|
| 8 | collective dominance, at least curious to a
|
| 9 | U.S. antitrust lawyer outside the U.S., so
|
| 10 | let me turn to those.
|
| 11 | First I'd like to turn to
|
| 12 | aftermarkets. As Patrick mentioned, this
|
| 13 | comes from the Kodak case. There the
|
| 14 | Supreme Court held that there was the
|
| 15 | potential, not that it was always the case,
|
| 16 | but the potential for there to be a single
|
| 17 | brand parts and service market, even where
|
| 18 | the company had a modest percentage and had
|
| 19 | no monopoly power in the interband equipment
|
| 20 | market. Here, Kodak had less than 25
|
| 21 | percent, clearly in the safe harbor of the
|
| 22 | interband photocopier market. Photocopiers
|
| 23 | are often referred to as Xerox machines, not
|
| 24 | Kodak machines. That's for a reason. They
|
| 25 | didn't have market power. But they had a |
55
| 1 | very large share of an intrabrand parts and
|
| 2 | service market for Kodak copiers.
|
| 3 | Now, post-Kodak, there have
|
| 4 | been a number of court cases interpreting
|
| 5 | Kodak, and they have limited Kodak's
|
| 6 | application in most circuits to a situation
|
| 7 | in which there has been a change of policy
|
| 8 | with respect to aftermarket sales of parts or
|
| 9 | service. That however has not been uniform.
|
| 10 | The Ninth Circuit is sort of an outlier.
|
| 11 | All in all, what this does,
|
| 12 | I believe, is create very significant
|
| 13 | problems. All suppliers of capital goods are
|
| 14 | exposed today to the notion of having to
|
| 15 | worry about whether or not they fall under
|
| 16 | Section 2 when they deal with parts and
|
| 17 | services for the products that they sell.
|
| 18 | And somewhat ironically, if
|
| 19 | you have a modest market share, you're one of
|
| 20 | the also-rans in the interbrand equipment
|
| 21 | market, you may have a higher share of your
|
| 22 | single-brand parts and service market for the
|
| 23 | very simple reason that third parties tend to
|
| 24 | focus on the most successful installed base
|
| 25 | products to develop non-OEM parts and non-OEM |
56
| 1 | services.
|
| 2 | So the competitor with ten
|
| 3 | percent in the interbrand equipment market
|
| 4 | may be more likely to have a monopoly sharebr>
|
| 5 | of a single-brand aftermarket than the
|
| 6 | leading firm in the interbrand equipment
|
| 7 | market.
|
| 8 | So this is a problem and
|
| 9 | it's a problem because it chills conduct. If
|
| 10 | you're going to counsel, what it does is it
|
| 11 | really counsels you to adopt restrictive
|
| 12 | approaches from the outset and not change
|
| 13 | them. Because if you do that, you really
|
| 14 | don't have to worry about having a problem inbr>
|
| 15 | this area.
|
| 16 | I think the outcome is an
|
| 17 | incorrect one. It has been heavily
|
| 18 | criticized by a number of esteemed
|
| 19 | economists, many of which have either been
|
| 20 | former heads of the economic part of the
|
| 21 | antitrust division or the current head.
|
| 22 | Professor Carlton, Professor Shapiro,
|
| 23 | Professor Klein, and Professor Hovenkamp have
|
| 24 | all criticized the Kodak decision with respect
|
| 25 | to aftermarkets and suggested that it is |
57
| 1 | unnecessary and unsound.
|
| 2 | And the Department of Justice
|
| 3 | thought it was unsound in its amicus brief in
|
| 4 | Kodak.
|
| 5 | So I think what should be
|
| 6 | clarified here is this notion of single-brand
|
| 7 | aftermarkets. That concept from Kodak
|
| 8 | should be overturned. The government should
|
| 9 | give guidance, and should file amicus
|
| 10 | briefs in courts to try to clarify
|
| 11 | the law in this area.
|
| 12 | The same thing should happen
|
| 13 | in Europe. I have referenced comments by the
|
| 14 | International Chamber of Commerce that are on
|
| 15 | the DG Competition website with respect to
|
| 16 | the Article 82 discussion paper which give
|
| 17 | further reasons why there shouldn't be
|
| 18 | single-brand aftermarkets.
|
| 19 | Let's then turn to the issue
|
| 20 | of monopoly power outside of the U.S. Here,
|
| 21 | the International Competition Network has a
|
| 22 | unilateral conduct working group, and it has
|
| 23 | a draft report in-progress for its next
|
| 24 | convention in Moscow. And what it has
|
| 25 | found by surveying competition authorities |
58
| 1 | around the world is that generally, the
|
| 2 | presumption of dominance, which is essentially
|
| 3 | the non-U.S. equivalent of monopoly power, is
|
| 4 | set at a 33 percent to 50 percent level.
|
| 5 | Now, that's below what is essentially the
|
| 6 | U.S. safe harbor level.
|
| 7 | And what it does, of course,
|
| 8 | in a global marketplace is tend to expose a
|
| 9 | much larger number of leading firms to the
|
| 10 | potential that you have to worry about
|
| 11 | whether your conduct is going to be
|
| 12 | characterized in these regimes as abusive, or
|
| 13 | if you use the United States approach, as
|
| 14 | exclusionary.
|
| 15 | Now, there's one good thing.
|
| 16 | There's also a trend towards taking a
|
| 17 | behavioral approach, which is looking at the
|
| 18 | ability to set market prices, the same
|
| 19 | approach taken under Section 2 in the U.S.,
|
| 20 | rather than a purely structural presumption
|
| 21 | based on market shares.
|
| 22 | I'd like to turn to another
|
| 23 | problem that I think is one that should be
|
| 24 | addressed. It's not a huge problem today,
|
| 25 | but it's the concept of collec | |