Recent tweets by @realDonaldTrump about 5G and competition caused public head-scratching by political and tech commentators. However, observers of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division under the leadership of Makan Delrahim immediately recognized those tweets to be a reflection of the division’s pro-innovation, pro-competitive stance.
Specifically, Delrahim has been addressing the hold-out problem of implementers refusing to adopt the newest standard, like 5G, unless the innovators that developed the standard technology meet their demands. At the same time, the Federal Trade Commission has seemingly continued to represent the anti-patent, anti-competitive position of Chinese companies (e.g., Huawei) and American implementers (e.g., Apple) that rely on American innovations but don’t want to pay for the innovators’ work.
