Geoffrey Manne

In the publisher/Apple antitrust suit, one criticism that has emerged from the publisher partisan camp is that the DoJ is picking on them for trying to defend themselves against Amazon’s growing monopoly, while turning a blind eye to what Amazon is doing. However, the Wall Street Journal is running a piece in which it talks to antitrust scholars to try to dispel some misconceptions.

U.S. antitrust law, the article explains, isn’t about protecting little companies from big ones, or even necessarily preventing monopolies as long as the monopolies are reached through legal means.

(Credit: CBS) ANALYSIS (CNET)The U.S. Justice Department's legal pursuit of Apple for stretches the boundaries of antitrust law and is likely to end in defeat. That's what happened in 1982, when an embarrassed Justice Department admitted its antitrust lawsuit against IBM was "without merit" and abandoned the case. And in 2001, a federal appeals court nixed the Justice Department's ambitious attempt to rewrite antitrust law by carving Microsoft into two separate companies. "It's a harder case against Apple than the publishers," says Geoffrey Manne, who teaches antitrust law at the Lewis and Clark Law School in Oregon and runs