Andrew Chin

Antitrust by Chance: A Unified Theory of Horizontal Merger Doctrine

In the three decades since United States v Vons Grocer) Co., in which the Supreme Court enjoined the merger of two grocery chains comprising a total of 7.5% of the Los Angeles market, antitrust law has continued to lack a unified economic framework to guide and justify the structural analysis of horizontal mergers. 2 The development of the modern system of horizontal merger analysis, focusing on market concentration, has not resolved the incoherence and uncertainty in the underlying economic theory. To the contrary, now that structural analysis of market concentration is a requisite element of virtually every horizontal merger case, antitrust jurisprudence appears committed to a program of balancing uncertainties, weighing econometric proxies, and applying decision rules to probabilistic statements of fact: a regime of antitrust by chance.

Research in the Shadow of DNA Patents

In recent years, the Federal Circuit and the Patent Office have characterized the legal doctrines governing the patentability of DNA molecules as essentially settled. This Article argues that the factual premises underlying those doctrines are increasingly being undermined by ongoing developments in biotechnology. Specifically, it may soon be possible to demonstrate that the patenting of DNA molecules retards the identification and sequencing of so many other useful DNA molecules that patent-driven DNA research is a self-defeating enterprise. To this end, this Article provides quantitative evidence of the preclusive effects of DNA patenting on specific laboratory procedures in genetic research. In drawing its methodologies and motivation from genetic engineering and bioinformatics, this Article establishes a new interdisciplinary space wherein the technological consequences of DNA patenting can be rigorously described and studied.