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The classical “law & technology” approach focuses on harms created by technology. This approach seems to be common sense; after all, why be interested—from a legal standpoint—in situations where technology does not cause damage? On close inspection, another approach dubbed “law + technology” can better increase the common good. The “+” approach builds on complexity science to consider both the issues and positive contributions technology brings to society. The goal is to address the negative ramifications of technology while leveraging its positive regulatory power. Achieving this double objective requires policymakers and regulators to consider a range of intervention methods and choose the ones that are most suitable.

In the first quarter of 2022, the Stanford Computational Antitrust project team invited the partnering antitrust agencies to share their advances in implementing computational tools. Here are the results of the survey.

The Amsterdam Law Forum (ALF) has released in this edition a Special Collection titled Report on Blockchain for Societies, which has been edited by Dr Thibault Schrepel who is an Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) and PhD student in blockchain and antitrust Kirill Ryabtsev. This Report is composed of several contributions written by prominent scholars and practitioners in the area of blockchain technology, the Report discusses the application of blockchain governance to various legal fields such as data protection, regulation of luxurious goods industry, real estate, health and vaccines, and laws on nationality.

This innovative and original book explores the relationship between blockchain and antitrust, highlighting the mutual benefits that stem from cooperation between the two and providing a unique perspective on how law and technology could cooperate.

Computational antitrust is a new domain of legal informatics which seeks to develop computational methods for the automation of antitrust procedures and the improvement of antitrust analysis. The present article first introduces it, then explores how agencies, policymakers, and market participants can benefit from it. Against this background, it sets out a research agenda for the years ahead in view of providing answers to the challenges created by computational antitrust, and better understand its limits.

This paper originates from a long-standing anachronism of antitrust law in regard to high-tech markets. Conventional wisdom assumes that antitrust law mechanisms are well suited to the study of practices in technology markets and that only adjustments are to be made here and there. This is untrue. Several practices fall outside the scope of antitrust law because mechanisms for assessing the legality of practices are not adequate. In fact, no one can accurately identify a typical legal approach for non-price strategies. A chaotic jurisprudence emerges from it, which we will show. With this paper, our ambition is to contribute to the literature by advancing a new test, called the "enhanced no economic sense" test, to be applied to non-price strategies. Various tests have been designed over the years to address the legality of diverse practices under antitrust law. Some of them are based on price analysis, including the test of the equally efficient rival, the rising rivals' costs test, and the profit sacrifice test. Some others are based on comparison, such as the balancing test, the test of disproportionality, and the compatibility test. They all suffer from multiple flaws. None of them, in fact, address non-price strategies such as predatory innovation without creating numerous type-I or II errors. Conversely, the test proposed in this article results in the creation of a uniform rule of law, which will ultimately increase consumer welfare by encouraging companies to keep innovating.