While serving a non-profit pro bono I spent some time researching antitrust issues in the standard setting process. Approaching anti-competition risk management from this perspective is quite different than approaching antitrust regulations from the perspective of defense counsel in the corporate space, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have considered this area of law from these divergent vantage points.
One may tend to orient oneself to a number of different facts and circumstances from within the context of the Clayton Act when approaching antitrust as a defense counsel in the corporate space; one is often dealing with more antitrust counsel and with opposing counsel, perhaps at the DOJ or the European Commission, or Ministry of Commerce, and these are parties who are necessarily well versed in antitrust law- they might even be the parties who wrote the laws or who spent five or seven or thirteen years on a particular matter, absorbing all of the relevant legal details as they followed a particular controversy from the complaint stage to the appellate stage.
In the non-profit space one might find oneself evaluating or making recommendations on specific scenarios or policies with attorneys and advisors who have high technical proficiency in their practice area, but not necessarily a background in business law.
Thus I would like to share a link to the helpful guide: ISO's "Competition Law Guidelines for Participants in the ISO Standards Development Process", which includes helpful tips such as:
"Do ensure that you and other participants that attend meetings have the necessary technical expertise."
"Do feel free to use and share information from the public domain, including historical and aggregated industry information (which doesn’t allow an individual business’s pricing or commercial strategy to be identified), but do be careful that it doesn’t lead to discussions on future strategy."
"Don’t fix any prices or price-related conditions with competitors."
Since it is Women's History Month, I am also going to share this chart from the US Department of Labor that conveys some statistics on women in the workplace. According to the chart, female chief executives comprise 28% of all chief executives in the labor force. Preschool and kindergarten teachers are 97.7% female. Lawyers are 37.4% female. Judges, magistrates, and other judicial workers are 28.1% female. Electricians are 2.5% female. Physicians and surgeons are 40% female.
From the chart, I was not able to deduce how many women are represented in standard setting organizations. It's an important question to consider; most of the above cited examples require a license, and are thus regulated by some set of standards somewhere.
It seems logical that the older a standard is, the more likely it is that it was devised exclusively by men. This would be true if gender balance statistics in standard making bodies are consistent with historic gender imbalances in the broader workplace. While some would want to spend time considering whether this is good, or unfortunately bad, I would merely posit that this is so. Further, I would seize the opportunity to make a brief reference to Rawls' "Veil of Ignorance", while contemplating this assertion.
So, some questions to ask this Women's History Month when thinking about standards:
Who developed the standard? When was the last time the standard was evaluated? Have female experts ever commented on how they approached the standard? Is it the best available standard for evaluating fitness for a particular purpose? How would we begin to undertake a task such as reconsidering all of our existing standards, in all contexts, in a big data world?
Happy March, all.
🐱
One may tend to orient oneself to a number of different facts and circumstances from within the context of the Clayton Act when approaching antitrust as a defense counsel in the corporate space; one is often dealing with more antitrust counsel and with opposing counsel, perhaps at the DOJ or the European Commission, or Ministry of Commerce, and these are parties who are necessarily well versed in antitrust law- they might even be the parties who wrote the laws or who spent five or seven or thirteen years on a particular matter, absorbing all of the relevant legal details as they followed a particular controversy from the complaint stage to the appellate stage.
In the non-profit space one might find oneself evaluating or making recommendations on specific scenarios or policies with attorneys and advisors who have high technical proficiency in their practice area, but not necessarily a background in business law.
Thus I would like to share a link to the helpful guide: ISO's "Competition Law Guidelines for Participants in the ISO Standards Development Process", which includes helpful tips such as:
"Do ensure that you and other participants that attend meetings have the necessary technical expertise."
"Do feel free to use and share information from the public domain, including historical and aggregated industry information (which doesn’t allow an individual business’s pricing or commercial strategy to be identified), but do be careful that it doesn’t lead to discussions on future strategy."
"Don’t fix any prices or price-related conditions with competitors."
Since it is Women's History Month, I am also going to share this chart from the US Department of Labor that conveys some statistics on women in the workplace. According to the chart, female chief executives comprise 28% of all chief executives in the labor force. Preschool and kindergarten teachers are 97.7% female. Lawyers are 37.4% female. Judges, magistrates, and other judicial workers are 28.1% female. Electricians are 2.5% female. Physicians and surgeons are 40% female.
From the chart, I was not able to deduce how many women are represented in standard setting organizations. It's an important question to consider; most of the above cited examples require a license, and are thus regulated by some set of standards somewhere.
It seems logical that the older a standard is, the more likely it is that it was devised exclusively by men. This would be true if gender balance statistics in standard making bodies are consistent with historic gender imbalances in the broader workplace. While some would want to spend time considering whether this is good, or unfortunately bad, I would merely posit that this is so. Further, I would seize the opportunity to make a brief reference to Rawls' "Veil of Ignorance", while contemplating this assertion.
So, some questions to ask this Women's History Month when thinking about standards:
Who developed the standard? When was the last time the standard was evaluated? Have female experts ever commented on how they approached the standard? Is it the best available standard for evaluating fitness for a particular purpose? How would we begin to undertake a task such as reconsidering all of our existing standards, in all contexts, in a big data world?
Happy March, all.
🐱
