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The growth of organized labor during the latter part of the nineteenth century triggered an organizational impulse on the part of employers across the country. Although some employers’ associations began as “negotiatory” bodies engaged in collective bargaining, the vast majority of them shifted toward a more “belligerent” approach. Academic scholarship has generally focused on the belligerents at the national level. Recently, some scholars have begun to study organized employers at the community level, but they continue to feature the more typical staunchly anti-union associations. This study of Columbus, Ohio's master printers’ association reveals a different pattern of local labor relations during the years between 1887 and 1960 – an association that had generally smooth bargaining relationships with craft unions. Columbus’ conservative and sheltered economy enabled the longstanding cooperative shared printing craft culture to thrive. But changes in Columbus’ economy, shifts in larger patterns of industrial relations, the hard-line influence of the national employers’ association, and technological changes altered the context of local labor relations. The result was that, by 1960, the Columbus association sought the upper hand in labor relations by becoming a more traditional and belligerent employers’ association. This story of “latecomers” adds to our understanding of organized employer behavior under different historical periods and circumstances.

This paper focuses on two related questions at the intersection of antitrust and intellectual property law. First, under what circumstances must the holder of a patent or a copyright or the owner of a trade secret allow others to use that intellectual property? Second, under what circumstances can the holder of an intellectual property right use that right to make it difficult for another party to succeed in a related market? These questions have vexed antitrust and intellectual property scholars alike ever since the Federal Circuit ruled in 2000 that patent holders “may enforce the statutory right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the claimed invention free from liability under the antitrust laws,” a ruling that directly contradicted the Ninth Circuit ruling that antitrust liability could be imposed for almost identical conduct, depending on the motivations of the patent holder. The various proceedings in United States v. Microsoft only added fuel to the firestorm of controversy.After briefly retracing the jurisprudential path to see how this situation arose, we propose a solution that primarily involves a variation on the real property concept of adverse possession for the intellectual property space along with a slight extension of the Essential Facilities Doctrine for industries that exhibit network effects. We examine, both for firms with and without market power, how our proposal would resolve the situations presented by large fixed asset purchases, the introduction of entirely new products, and operating systems with network effects. We also demonstrate how our proposal could be applied in the European antitrust enforcement context.

In many sectors property rights over knowledge and information are weak as they are embodied in employees, competitors can copy or customers can pirate. Yet comprehensive studies show that firms systematically invest in these assets. We offer a simple taxonomy of strategies that firms use to cope with weak property rights.We classify these strategies in three groups: (i) Some firms threaten offenders with strong competition. (ii) Other firms exploit complementarities and offer potential offenders a better deal than they can get elsewhere. (iii) And yet other firms exploit weak property rights and make profits on complementary assets or products that they can own.We go beyond taxonomy by showing when a particular strategy works. It depends systematically on the characteristics of both the asset and the investing firm.

The chapter is devoted to considering the aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic influence on the global and Russian electronics industry. The work aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the electronic industry in the world and Russia from various angles. As a result of the study, the main features of the global electronic industry are highlighted, including leadership of Western European countries, Japan and the United States in the segment of high price electronics; the leadership of the new industrial countries in a lower price segment; active development of microelectronics as an electronics industry segment and its colossal role in the economy of modern countries; the trend towards acquisitions of small companies by large corporations and other industry. Key problems of the Russian electronics are identified, including a small fraction of the global electronics dependence of Russian industry on imported electronic components, a huge backlog of electronic industry of Russia in comparison of world leaders and the newly industrialized countries, technological backwardness of many enterprises of electronic industry, the low level of qualification as a whole industry. The novelty of the research is highlighting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the electronics industry. The study highlights both negative consequences (decline in production of many electronic enterprises, disruption of supply chains, insufficient financing of the industry) and positive aspects (active growth of the segment of household appliances and electronics), as well as an impetus to the development of new directions of world electronics (radio-photonics, optoelectronic and quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, laser technology).

Purpose – This chapter discusses the difference between a product strategy and a platform strategy, relying on examples from the history of Apple and Microsoft in personal computers and other devices as well as Sony and Japan Victor Corporation in videocassette recorders.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter begins with a review of how the term “platform” has been used in the management literature and defines an industry-wide platform (as compared to an in-house company product platform) as a foundation technology (or service) that brings multiple parties in a market together for a common purpose. An industry-wide platform can generate powerful network effects between the platform and complementary products and services that make the platform increasingly valuable. Apple, with the Macintosh computer, and Sony with the Betamax VCR as well as other products, such as the Walkman media player, are examples of firms that developed excellent products but followed a product-first strategy and ended up losing in these markets or becoming niche players. They paid relatively little attention to opening up their technology to outside firms and cultivating an ecosystem of partners. Apple changed in the early 2000s with the iPod and iTunes, and then the iPhone and iPad, and has risen from near bankruptcy to become an enormously valuable and profitable platform leader.

Findings – Historical examples suggest that, in a platform market, the winner is not the firm with the best product, but rather the firm with the best platform – that is, the foundation technology or service that is most open to outsiders and which stimulates development of the most compelling complements.

Originality/value – This result extends the literature's understanding of platform strategy.