Antitrust Experts: US Government Should Avoid Enforcement in Tech Industry

US government agencies should be wary of bringing antitrust complaints against tech companies such as Google or Apple, because of the ever-changing nature of the industry, some antitrust experts said.

The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission should "think long and hard" before bringing antitrust cases in the tech sector, said Ronald Cass, president of legal consultancy Cass and Associates and a former vice chairman of the U.S. International Trade Commission. Government antitrust lawyers often assume that dominant companies will stay in power when the tech market changes quickly, he said during a discussion on technology antitrust issues at the Federalist Society, a conservative legal think tank. When the DOJ brought an antitrust case against IBM in 1969, it believed mainframe computers were the only viable computing platform for the foreseeable future, and when the DOJ brought an antitrust case against AT&T in 1974, it saw landline telephones as the only viable method of voice communications, Cass said. In less than 20 years, both of those assumptions were proven wrong.