Our Broadband Breakfast Live Online events take place every Wednesday at 12 Noon ET. You can watch the February 24, 2021, event on this page. You can also PARTICIPATE in the current Broadband Breakfast Live Online event. REGISTER HERE.

Wednesday, February 24, 2021, 12 Noon ET — “Antitrust, the Consumer Welfare Standard and Big Tech Platforms”

• • Antitrust is on a roll. Major new lawsuits have been introduced against tech platforms Google and Facebook by the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission, and state attorneys general. And Congress is considering a revamp of the law. Undergirding much of the discussion and debate is this question: What role should the consumer welfare standard play in assessing harm to competition?

WATCH HERE, or on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. 

Panelists include:

• Maureen K. Ohlhausen, Chair of the Global Antitrust and Competition Practice at Baker Botts and former Acting Chairman of the FTC
• Avery Gardiner, General Counsel and Senior Fellow for Competition, Data, and Power at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT)
• Geoffrey Manne, President and Founder of the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE)
• Drew Clark (Moderator), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast

Maureen K. Ohlhausen chairs the antitrust group at Baker Botts LLP, where she focuses on competition, privacy and regulatory issues and frequently represents clients in the tech, life sciences, energy, and retail industries. She served as Acting Chairman at the Federal Trade Commission from January 2017 to May 2018 and as a Commissioner starting in 2012, where she directed all FTC competition and consumer protection work, with a particular emphasis on privacy and technology issues. Ms. Ohlhausen has published dozens of articles on antitrust, privacy, regulation, FTC litigation, and telecommunications law issues, has testified over a dozen times before Congress, and has received numerous awards, including the FTC’s Robert Pitofsky Lifetime Achievement Award. Ms. Ohlhausen clerked at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and received her J.D. with distinction from the George Mason University School of Law and her B.A. with honors from the University of Virginia.

Avery Gardiner is the General Counsel and Senior Fellow for Competition, Data, and Power at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT). She leads the organization’s legal work overall in addition to the organization’s competition project, focusing on the policy and legal implications of competition issues in the digital world. She served in the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice and was an in-house antitrust lawyer for a tech company. She is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School and is a mother of two.

Geoffrey A. Manne is the president and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center based in Portland, Oregon. He is also a distinguished fellow at Northwestern University’s Center on Law, Business, and Economics. Manne holds AB & JD degrees from the University of Chicago. He is an expert in the economic analysis of law, focusing particularly on antitrust, telecom, IP, and the regulation of technology. His writings and publications are available at SSRN and ICLE.

Panelist Resources

• “Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets: Majority Staff Report and Recommendations,” House Judiciary Committee, October 2020
• “The Third Way (Rep. Buck Report),” Minority Report, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law, October 2020
• “Hearing on Online Platforms and Market Power Part 2: Innovation and Entrepreneurship,” U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, Maureen K. Ohlhausen, July 16, 2019
• “Breaking Up Big Tech,” Stanford and BYU chapters of the Adam Smith Society, debate with Geoffrey A. Manne and Dipayan Ghosh, January 27, 2020
• “United States v. Google: Examining the Historic Antitrust Case Against Big Tech,” Federalist Society’s Corporations, Securities & Antitrust Practice Group and the Regulatory Transparency Project, Geoffrey A. Manne, panel discussion, October 30, 2020
• “Competition in Digital Platform Markets: A Question of Definitions, ICLE tl;dr,” by Sam Bowman & Geoffrey A. Manne, July 21 2020
• “Consumer Welfare & The Rule of Law: The Case Against the New Populist Antitrust Movement,” Pepperdine Law Review, Elyse Dorsey, Geoffrey A. Manne, Jan M. Rybnicek, Kristian Stout, and Joshua D. Wright, May 1, 2020
• Invited Statement of Geoffrey A. Manne on House Judiciary Investigation Into Competition in Digital Markets: Correcting Common Misperceptions About the State of Antitrust Law and Enforcement, Geoffrey A. Manne, April 17, 2020
• “Why US Antitrust Law Should Not Emulate European Competition Policy, A Comparative Look at Competition Law Approaches to Monopoly and Abuse of Dominance in the US and EU,” US Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, Geoffrey A. Manne, December 19, 2018
• Antitrust Principles and Evidence-Based Antitrust Under the Consumer Welfare Standard, FTC Competition & Consumer Protection Hearings, ICLE Comment 5, Dirk Auer, Justin (Gus) Hurwitz, Geoffrey A. Manne, Julian Morris, Kristian Stoutt, October 14, 2018
• The Future of Tech Antitrust in the Biden Administration, Brookings, Darrell M. West, Avery Gardiner, Nicol Turner Lee, Leah Nylen, Matt Perault, December 1, 2020
• “Week in Review: The House Report on Big Tech,” Technology by Design Podcast, Matt Perault with guest Avery Gardiner, October 13 – October 28, 2020
• “What to Look For at the Mega Hearing of CEOs Testifying on Antitrust,” Center for Democracy & Technology, Avery Gardiner, July 23, 2020

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See a complete list of upcoming and past Broadband Breakfast Live Online events.