Innovation Incentives, Compatibility, and Expropriation as an Antitrust Remedy: The Legacy of the Borland/Ashton-Tate Consent Decree

This essay explores the impact of intellectual property-based antitrust remedies in high-techology markets characterized by technological standardization and strong intellectual property for first movers. Our motivation is the consent decree employed in the 1991 software industry merger of Borland International, Inc. and Ashton-Tate Corporation (Borland). Apparently concerned that the merged entity