Antitrust
Antitrust and trade regulation laws embody national or transnational policy decisions seeking to maintain free competition.
Those policy decisions are reflected in laws, and are further articulated in rules, regulations, and judicial rulings. In the United States, the federal antitrust laws include the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act. The United States Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have overlapping jurisdiction over matters affecting competition, although private litigants have the right to bring suit under the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act.
The owners of intellectual property possess exclusionary rights, e.g.., the right to exclude others (often, but not necessarily, competitors) from making, using, selling, importing etc. a product that infringes a patent; from using a method that infringes a patent; from using a mark that is confusingly similar to another mark; or from copying the expression of an idea protected by copyright. This right of exclusivity, founding in the United States Constitution, sometimes has been said to conflict with the rights of free competition embodied in the antitrust laws. The interaction and interplay between intellectual property law and antitrust law is a matter of interest to the AIPLA.
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