Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
BACKGROUND CONCEPTS: WHAT IS THE ESSENTIAL FACILITIES DOCTRINE? (note: NOT in the paper)
Monopolistic, anti-competitive behavior which a firm engages in to deny entry into the market, by restricting access to
the “essential facility”
Under this doctrine, the owner of the “essential facility” would be mandated to provide access to such
US Antitrust law is essentially competition law
Sherman Act
CONCLUSION
In those rare and exceptional circumstances where a facility is truly essential to competition, the anticompetitive
effects of denial of access are severe, and there is no business justification (and particularly when there is evidence of
a specific intent to injure a rival), U.S. courts will impose antitrust liability for a monopolist's refusal to license access
to an essential facility
US antitrust law permits a court to order compulsory licensing of such intellectual prop- erty. Indeed, notwithstanding
the defendant-monopolist's arguments against applying the doctrine where the subject asset was intellectual property
or in situations that did not involve vertically related markets, courts in the United States have applied this rule in
appropriate cases like Kodak, Data and Aspen Skiing.
While it is important that the essential facilities doctrine not be allowed to expand into a vague and amorphous set of
"rights," the approach of most lower courts in the United States-applying the doctrine cautiously and pursuant to
limiting principles-seems to work well.