Competition

A New Issue of the Antitrust Law Journal is Out!

January 14, 2014 | Bona Law PC

I was excited to find a brand-new crisp copy of the Antitrust Law Journal at my San Diego office today. That may seem like an odd statement, but I am admittedly a bit of a law nerd, particularly when it comes to antitrust and competition issues.

Many lawyers today have, unfortunately, lost the enthusiasm for law that they once had in law school or early in their careers. I have not. I love legal ideas and arguments, and the deeper I can explore a subject, the better.

What is great about antitrust and competition law is that unlike many areas of practice, it is well-connected to the academic and economic world. Indeed, I believe that to truly excel in this area, an attorney must follow and even participate in the exchange of ideas that might seem academic. The ideas in the Antitrust Law Journal, and antitrust articles in university law journals, for example, quickly infiltrate their way into agency practice and court decisions.

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I Commend AT&T and T-Mobile for Fighting

January 5, 2014 | Bona Law PC

Competition is beautiful. As an antitrust lawyer, I often face situations where one side or the other asserts that competition is restricted for some reason. And sometimes it isn’t, but another party claims that it is because it is losing the competition.

Or a government official prematurely acts on a fashionable new paper from a confident economist describing an economic model—with several assumptions having nothing to do with the real world—showing that some business practice violates the antitrust laws. It is a lot of work—but important work—to untangle these allegations.

So when I read an article that shows honest straightforward competition between two companies, I smile.

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“It’s A Wonderful [Competitive] Life”

January 2, 2014 | Bona Law PC

Note: I co-authored this blog entry with my wife, Mary Bona.

We hope you all enjoyed the holiday season!

Along with the holidays come many traditions. One tradition in our family is to watch the heart-warming, iconic holiday film, It’s A Wonderful Life, starring James Stewart and Donna Reed. It’s no surprise that this film is amongst my wife’s favorites, not only because she loves the old classics, but also because, like the main character George, she is a small-business owner, and, like George’s wife (also named Mary), she loves old homes and fixing up the dilapidated ones.

Frank Capra, the film’s director and producer, was a Sicilian immigrant who grew up in the Italian ghetto of San Francisco. He started from very humble beginnings to become one of the most influential directors of his time. During his acceptance speech for the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 1982, Capra stressed his most important values:

“The art of Frank Capra is very simple: …the love of people…coupled with the freedom of each individual, and the equal importance of each individual, [is] the principle on which I based all my films.”

He went on to recall “celebrating” his 6th birthday in the miserable steerage section of a boat full of other terrified immigrants. After 13 awful days at sea, the boat stopped, and Capra’s father brought him up to the deck of the huge ship. “’Chico, look at that!’”, his father cried, “That’s the greatest light since the star of Bethlehem! I looked up, and there was the statue of a great lady, taller than a church steeple, holding a lamp over the land we were about to enter, and my father said, ‘It’s the light of Freedom, Chico. Remember that. Freedom.’”

It’s no wonder that, when he finally formed his own independent film production, he titled it “Liberty Films,” and the first thing we see when the movie starts is the tolling of the famous Liberty Bell. Continue reading →