The Competition Bureau Canada says that, when it protects competition to innovate, it may be able to do more than protect competition in Future Markets. It says that it may be able to protect competition in what the European Commission calls an Innovation Space. The Bureau says this in its discussion paper, in which it explains its initial thoughts, and to which it asks others to respond as it considers issuing new merger enforcement guidelines.
Responding to this discussion paper, Lawrence B. Landman shows that the Canadian Bureau, like all competition authorities, can do no more than protect competition in Future Markets. Landman analyzes the three Canadian cases in which the Bureau implied that it may have found an Innovation Space, or done something other than protect competition in a Future Market. Landman shows that in these cases the Bureau’s analyses focused on current markets, markets for currently existing products. It also to a limited extent analyzed competition in Future Markets. But it did no more than that. It certainly did not protect competition in an Innovation Space.
In sum, Landman says the Canadian guidelines should follow the American guidelines and acknowledge that when authorities protect competition to innovate they protect competition in Future Markets.
