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While the background makes sense, I don't think the conclusion follows (that this isn't an antitrust issue in the slightest). Frankly - many of those other fir

by emn13 4y ago

While the background makes sense, I don't think the conclusion follows (that this isn't an antitrust issue in the slightest). Frankly - many of those other firms are antitrust worries too; it's just that legal antitrust tools are quite weak and (IMHO) insufficient for ensuring competition, and other borderline monopolies likely have better lobbyists. And that might work against ARM here, because the very customers ARM will be squeezing here are those entities with potentially harmful amounts of market (and political) influence. We'll see how this develops, but I wouldn't take it for granted that this is not antitrust worthy in the slightest. It probably won't get to that, but to entirely exclude the possibility...

brookst 4y ago
Antitrust law generally applies to those with large or dominant market positions, to keep them from distorting the market in order to protect their position. ARM is certainly large but I don’t think anyone would argue there are no alternatives (this thread is full of many!). And the angle to get antitrust here is pretty nuclear: it would require saying that Arm IP is so critical that the company has lost the right to license it as they see fit. Not quite a revocation of their IP rights, but close. So yeah we can’t totally rule it out, but such an action seems incredibly unlikely. Especially given the specifics of the complaint here, where someone wants to leverage a beneficial price they get from Arm to undercut Arm in the market. It reminds me of that “TV antennas in a datacenter” company that sought to leverage broadcast TV licensing for internet streaming delivery: a clever troll but never going to stand up to contract law, and unlikely to get regulatory support.