Catch Me if You Can! The Microsoft Saga and the Sorrows of Old Antitrust
Andrea Renda, Luiss Guido Carli, Rome
Abstract
At the intersection between intellectual property protection and antitrust, the Microsoft case has now become a synecdoche, a part for the whole: the browser war has indeed evolved as a marginal skirmish that should be interpreted in the light of a more general IPR war. The paper describes the peculiar aspects and the questions that remain unsolved in the Microsoft case and points at the hidden places of digital capitalism, in search of an approach that reconciles the outstanding potential of e2e architecture with the need to ensure that content producers are able to control the diffusion of contents circulating oÂn the Net.
JEL Classification: K21; L49
Keywords: Microsoft case; Antitrust; Digital capitalism; Software market