International Intellectual Property Law/Competition Law

International Intellectual Property Law/Competition Law

FIRST QUESTIONS
A Belgian utility (Belgacom) had the exclusive right to publish the listing of its subscribers as
part of its telephone concession. Once this right was excluded in 1994 by a supervening law, a
company (ITT Promedia) requested access to the database to publish a specialized,
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The point here is that the sacrifice of profit in the short run is not always present in predatory pricing. A lowcost monopolist can hurt competition (not only the competitors) using strategically its advantages to exclude
competitors with little or no effort, as Edlin (2001) explains. Sacrifice has been defined by Bork (1978, p. 145) as an
“investment in monopoly profit”. This voluntary sacrifice, having the damage to competition as motivation, could also
be associated to other legitimate reasons. Today’s production can generate lower costs in the future in a learning by
doing industry or, in a straight forward form, “sacrifice” in a product could be immediately compensated by raising the
profits in a complementary product. This way, the profit sacrifice in the short run is neither necessary nor sufficient to
create damage and could be distant from both cases.
To monopolization, the sacrifice of profits is not necessary if the dominant firm detains substantial cost advantages
(adding the tax and financial advantages). Edlin (op.cit.) shows that sometimes an efficient firm uses its advantages
to offer good deals in stable markets, something that is good for consumers and economic efficiency, but
occasionally an efficient firm can do just the opposite, charge high prices or offer services and or products of low
quality while it faces little or no competition and offer the opposite only when the competition appears.
From a low-cost monopolistic point of view, to offer great deals after the arrival of a new competitor in order to hurt
and even provoke the exit of the newcomer does not necessarily imply sacrifice. One should change focus from
“sacrifice plus financial recovery” to “exclusion with great damage to the consumer and or efficiency”.