Intellectual Property Rights, External Effects, and Anti-trust Law

Ilkka Rahnasto is Vice President of the legal function of Nokia Corporation, specializing in Intellectual Property law. He is involved in the issues relating to IPR law and the IPR strategy of Nokia globally. Before joining Nokia he was a practising lawyer in Helsinki.

1. Introduction ; 2. How the tension between intellectual property protection and antitrust laws is balanced ; 2.1 Introduction ; 2.2 Supremacy of antitrust laws ; 2.3 Supremacy of intellectual property laws ; 2.4 Theory based on the scope of exclusive rights ; 2.5 Intellectual property rights as property ; 2.6 Cost-benefit theories ; 3. External effects and balancing theories ; 3.1 Introduction ; 3.2 Balance between intellectual property rights, competition and external effects in network-based value chain ; 4. External effects theory applied ; 4.1 Relevance of addressee/impact combination ; 4.2 Relevance of chosen action ; 4.3 Intellectual property and effects of technical design ; 4.4 Relevance of totality of circumstances ; 5. Fragmentation problem ; 5.1 Fragmentation and success of new products ; 5.2 Fragmentation problem introduced ; 5.3 The problem of anticommons in the communications industry ; 6. External effects of intellectual property rights in technology adoption ; 6.1 Tipping of scale ; 6.2 Technology adoption re-examined: standardization ; 7. Conclusions