Norman Hawker

Western Michigan University, Finance and Commercial Law, Faculty Member

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Liability for breach of trust and privacy

Routledge eBooks, Aug 17, 2023

Wintel Under the Antitrust Microscope: A Comparison of the European Intel Case with the U.S. Microsoft Cases, Updated as of May 12, 2009

Social Science Research Network, 2009

... Rather, US law has consistently condemned this type of exclusionary conduct as anticompetitiv... more

Overview of Aai's Real Estate Competition Project: Highlights from the Existing Literature on Broker Competition

With the recent activities of the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commi... more With the recent activities of the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, one might think that concern over competition in the residential real estate brokerage industry is a new phenomenon. In fact, as the literature highlighted in this essay and in the appended bibliography reveal, competition issues in this industry have been a major concern for the last half century.

Under Threat: Competition in the Automotive Service Aftermarket

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2008

... Bus. Rev. 129, 130 (2006) 7 Thomas Osegowitsch, & Anoop Madhok, Vertical Integration is D... more

Antitrust Insights from Strategic Management

NYL Sch. L. Rev., 2003

Antitrust law has long treated economics as a sister discipline. Yet antitrust law concerns busin... more Antitrust law has long treated economics as a sister discipline. Yet antitrust law concerns business behavior, and business schools, not economics departments, the primary centers teaching business managers how to behave. Consequently, a growing number of scholars, in the legal and business academies, have suggested that the study of business may yield new insights into antitrust law.' Two problems immediately confront anyone attempting to use business scholarship in antitrust law. First, one must pick from a plethora of business disciplines. Second, academic business scholarship does not enjoy the widespread readership among business managers that academic legal scholarship does among lawyers. 2 Consequently, academic writing may provide insights into business thinking and behavior, but even the top tier academic journals do not directly influence the thinking or behavior of business managers. As to the first issue, strategic management presents one area with an unusually high potential for insight because it explicitly deals with issues that concern antitrust law such as the effects of competitor behavior on other firms in the market. Richard Posner, for example, noted the importance of strategic management even as he conceded that the Chicago School of antitrust analysis has

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The Automobile Aftermarket: Crash Parts, Design Patents, and the Escape from Competition

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010

Automobile manufacturers have increasingly relied on design patents to prevent competition in the... more Automobile manufacturers have increasingly relied on design patents to prevent competition in the aftermarket for collision repair parts. This trend has competitive ramifications for consumers and other stakeholders in a number of related markets, including automobile insurance companies and collision repair services. The proposed "Access to Repair Parts Act" would create a limited exception to design patent law to promote competition in the collision repair parts aftermarket. This paper provides an overview of design patents, describes the aftermarket, elaborates on the anticompetitive effects design patents when enforced by the OEMs against third party parts distributors, and evaluates the proposal. Ultimately, this paper concludes that the proposal need not deny automobile manufacturers the profits that a design patent entitles them to receive, although it would shift their collection of that profit away from the aftermarket and toward the primary market. More importantly, the proposal would likely increase price competition in the aftermarket and benefit consumers in a variety ways, including improved transparency in the lifetime costs of different automobiles in the primary market.

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Consistently Wrong: The Single Product Issue and the Tying Claims Against Microsoft

Cal. WL Rev., 1998

A blatant hard-core tie would occur if Microsoft told customers, "You cannot buy Windows 95 unles... more A blatant hard-core tie would occur if Microsoft told customers, "You cannot buy Windows 95 unless you also buy Internet Explorer."' Microsoft has clearly met the burden of ascribing facially plausible benefits to [bundling Windows 95 and Internet Explorer] as compared to an operating system with a stand-alone browser.

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$Research paper thumbnail of The FTC\u27s Cruise Lines Decisions: Three Cheers For Transparency$

The FTC\u27s Cruise Lines Decisions: Three Cheers For Transparency

The FTC's Cruise Lines Decisions: Three Cheers For Transparency

Predatory Pricing Law in the United States and Canada

University of Miami Business Law Review, 1999

University of Michigan. I would like to thank the Dean of the Haworth College of Business for a m... more University of Michigan. I would like to thank the Dean of the Haworth College of Business for a mini-grant to support this research and the staff at the Waldo library Resource Sharing Center for their assistance. I would also like to thank Howard P. Knopf and Henry C. Su for their insights into Canadian competition law and legal research which undoubtedly reduced the number and severity of errors made in this article.

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Wal-Mart and the Divergence of State and Federal Predatory Pricing Law

Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 1996

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Strategic Management Concepts for Antitrust: Cooperation, Stakeholders and Sustainability

The Antitrust Bulletin, 2014

Now that the rule of reason has largely over taken per se rules of antitrust law in the United St... more Now that the rule of reason has largely over taken per se rules of antitrust law in the United States, antitrust enforcement generally requires evaluation of a wide variety of evidence to determine the challenged conduct's effect on competition. This article provides an overview of three concepts commonly taught in MBA-level strategic management courses to evaluate much of the same evidence for purposes of determining the firm's competitive strategy: cooperative strategies, stakeholder management, and sustainable business practices. Unlike the neoclassical microeconomic view of competition commonly used in modern antitrust analysis, strategic management teaches students to view competitors not only as rivals, but also as stakeholders with whom their firms may need to cooperate. While the application of these concepts to specific antitrust issues requires further analysis, these concepts provide a basis for supplementing the understanding of business competition under the rul...

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Wintel Under the Antitrust Microscope: A Comparison of the European Intel Case with the U.S. Microsoft Cases

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2007

ABSTRACT European Union has issued a statement of objections, and a supplemental statement of obj... more ABSTRACT European Union has issued a statement of objections, and a supplemental statement of objections, to Intel regarding the company’s conduct aimed at suppressing competition from Intel’s chief rival, AMD. Although the statements of objections remain confidential, the allegations in AMD’s private litigation are public and provide a useful basis for analysis. Intel dominates the PC chip market almost to the same degree that Microsoft dominates the PC operating system market. As in the Microsoft case, Intel’s aggressive marketing tactics prevented OEMs from offering rival products to consumers. And like Microsoft, Intel has engaged in this conduct to maintain its existing monopoly. These parallels between the Microsoft and Intel suggest that Intel’s anticompetitive practices harm consumers, including American consumers, by denying them the access to innovative products at lower prices from rivals. The United States established that Microsoft repeatedly and willfully violated the antitrust laws, but failed to achieve an effective remedy. The EU, however, should have an easier time achieving an effective remedy. First, unlike the OS market, a viable competitor still exists in the chip market, i.e., AMD. Second, Intel has relied primarily on exclusionary rebates, not commingling of intellectual property, to maintain its monopoly. Consequently, the EU should be able to fashion a remedy that does not require Intel to redesign its product.

Network Access, Regulation and Antitrust

... British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available... more

The Public Policy of Antitrust and Strategy: An Overview

Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 2002

or more than a century, the United States has used antitrust law in an elYort to control business... more or more than a century, the United States has used antitrust law in an elYort to control business behavior by forcing firms to compete. The same era that gave birth to antitrust law also witnessed the creation of the business school. In what must constitute one of the legal system's biggest ironies, however, antitrust law has largely ignored the insights of business theory and scholarship, choosing instead to focus on economics a.s a sister discipline. As the brand of economics used by antitrust law shifted from Harvard School industrial organization to Chicago School price theory, ct)urts, policymakers, and antitrust legal scholars increasingly attempted to force the facts of actual business behavior to fit into a simplistic framework that explained all conduct as a rational attempt to inaximi/e profits. During its first 85 years, antitrust law addressed three harms to competition: (I) the loss of a level playing field for competitors, (2) the exclusion of competitors from access to markets, and (3) the loss of consumer welfare (see Fox 2(K)2). The hard form of price theory advocated by Cbicago School adherents, however, refused to acknowledge any type of injury to competition other than ct)nsumer welfare losses. As the Chicago School infiuence reached its zenith during the Reagan Administration, concerns began to surface about the "Faustian Pact" of antitrust law and economics (Rowe 1984). Business scholarship has drawn increasing attention in the search for an alternative or, ut least, a complementary approach to economics that could account for both tbe actual behavior of businesses and tbe harms tt) competition beyond consumer welfare toss (Waller 2(K)I).

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Does Corporate Law Matter-Legal Capital Restrictions on Stock Distributions

Akron L. Rev., 1997

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How to block cartel formation and price-fixing

Brief Amicus Curiae, Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Apr 1, 2004

The past decade has witnessed nothing less than an explosion in the discovery of private internat... more The past decade has witnessed nothing less than an explosion in the discovery of private international cartels with global price-fixing ambitions. 2 This brief presents two major economic arguments in support of the decision below. First, in the context of international price-fixing conspiracies conduct relating to “wholly foreign” purchases necessarily affects domestic commerce. This is because international cartels must prevent international geographic arbitrage in order to succeed in controlling prices in any targeted national ...

Avoiding the Efficiency Trap

The Antitrust Bulletin, 2015

For most of the last half century, economic concepts of efficiency have dominated antitrust law a... more For most of the last half century, economic concepts of efficiency have dominated antitrust law and competition policy. Debates have largely centered around how to apply these concepts to specific types of business conduct, for example, whether a particular merger is efficient or a particular action will exclude equally efficient competitors from the market, while concerns about market structure have largely receded into the background. Business scholarship and practice, however, have begun to place an increasing emphasis on sustainability. Sustainability not only challenges the basic assumption of efficiency analysis that firms rationally pursue profit maximization, sustainability also suggests that overreliance on efficiency may be a trap that renders markets less resilient and more prone to collapse in the face of abrupt changes. Growing concern about the fragility of supply chain networks provides a case in point. To avoid the efficiency trap requires consideration of both effic...

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