Two Gould professors win 2022 Concurrences Antitrust Writing Awards

Erik Hovenkamp, left, and D. Daniel Sokol

In competition with more than 350 academic article nominations, USC Gould School of Law Professors Erik Hovenkamp and D. Daniel Sokol were winners earlier this year of the 2022 Concurrences Antitrust Writing Awards. The Antitrust Writing Awards aim to promote competition scholarship and competition advocacy.

Hovenkamp’s article, “Antitrust limits on Patent Settlements: A New Approach” in the Journal of Industrial Economics, co-authored with Jorge Lemus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, grapples with how to evaluate potentially anti-competitive patent settlements between competitors, a complex and ongoing issue.

“It’s very important, because firms enter into patent settlements with their rivals all the time, and we need to have concrete rules for what is allowed and what’s off limits,” said Hovenkamp. “Our paper identified a different way of tackling these cases that would avoid many of the practical and conceptual difficulties that currently plague this area of antitrust enforcement.”

Hovenkamp said he and Lemus saw the award as recognition of their efforts.

“We worked hard on this paper for a long time and are glad that it has been well-received,” he said.

Sokol’s paper, “Debt, Control and Collusion” in Emory Law Journal, focuses on shifting the debate from a focus on common stock ownership to a focus on common control, suggesting that a fundamental change in antitrust policy is necessary to combat debt-control-based collusion.

“It’s wonderful to know that my work has an impact both in the academic and practice communities,” Sokol said. “It’s particularly meaningful given who judged the paper, and I was lucky enough to be selected for the award. The awards committee has luminaries from both academia and practice.”

The selection committee is composed of leading antitrust enforcers, academics and counsel.