Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairwoman Edith Ramirez appointed a law professor from Seton Hall University School of Law to direct the agency’s Office of Policy Planning. Professor Marina Lao will join the FTC in February, succeeding Professor Andrew I. Gavil, as he returns to Howard University School of Law.
The Office of Policy Planning helps the FTC develop and implement long-range competition and consumer protection policy initiatives and advises staff on cases raising new or complex policy and legal issues.
Lao’s teaching at Seton Hall focuses on antitrust enforcement. A member of the advisory board of the American Antitrust Institute, Lao also has offered invited testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet as well as testimony at hearings sponsored by the FTC and the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice.
As a Fulbright Fellow to the University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law, she taught U.S. antitrust law in Munich, Germany. On the domestic front Lao has published several law review articles on antitrust, her most recent works being:
- Ideology Matters in the Antitrust Debate, 79 Antitrust L.J. 649 (2014);
- ‘Neutral’ Search as a Basis for Antitrust Action?, Harv. J.L. & Tech. Occasional Paper Series (July 2013);
- Search, Essential Facilities, and the Antitrust Duty to Deal, 11 Northwestern Journal of Technology & Intellectual Property 275 (2013);
- The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good: The Antitrust Objections to the Google Books Settlement, 78 Antitrust L.J. 201 (2012).
“I am very pleased to welcome Professor Lao to our leadership team, where her depth of knowledge in the areas of competition and intellectual property law will help the Federal Trade Commission continue to effectively promote competition and protect American consumers,” Ramirez said. “We are very grateful to Professor Gavil for his outstanding work and public service.”