Compulsory Licensing: An Underrated Antitrust Remedy

By Richard Gilbert

Compulsory licensing of intellectual property is a common remedy for harms to competition from mergers, but antitrust enforcers generally shun compulsory licensing as a remedy for monopolization because they are concerned that actual or threatened compulsory licensing deters innovation. However, neither anecdotal nor empirical evidence supports a conclusion that infrequent instances of compulsory licensing have deterred innovation by firms that were compelled to license their