Innovation and Cooperation: Implications for Competition and Antitrust

This paper begins by describing the nature of the innovation process. We then explore socially beneficial forms of cooperation that can assist the development and commercialization of new technology, and suggest modifications to current U.S. antitrust law that would remove unnecessary impediments to organizational arrangements that support innovation and stimulate competition in the United States. The modifications we propose would create “safe harbors” for various forms of cooperative activities among competitors in unconcentrated markets, and they would permit cooperation in concentrated markets if commercialization and appropriability were thereby facilitated. These modifications would bring U.S. antitrust laws closer to what is already in place in Europe and Japan and would promote competition more assuredly than would existing law.