Natural Monopolies in Antitrust & IP

Here's another "big think" paper I wrote but never published on the subject of how natural monopolies are handled by judges in antitrust, patent, and copyright law.

In a nutshell, judges are generally aware of the phenomenon of natural monopolies.  The essential facility doctrine is more or less explicitly designed to handle the situation.  But to avoid the potential vitiation of their economic benefits, patent and copyright law should offer the release valve of compulsory licensing remedies in this situation as well.  You don't need the Feist originality doctrine or the reverse doctrine of equivalents to do this work; you could just write it into the remedies law explicitly.  Nevertheless we have these doctrines, so we might as well given them definite work to do.  My readers know that I generally favor rules that are explicitly economic.