Superstar companies may not be evil, just good at what they do
The US Patent and Trademark Office shows a few companies have been applying for a larger share of patents, as well as buying up an increasing percentage of the patents that already exist
Big companies are taking over the US In industry after industry, from telecoms to retail to banking to healthcare, larger corporations are gobbling up market share from smaller ones — sometimes by merging with them, sometimes by taking their business. Nor does the trend toward mega-corporations show any sign of abating. A proposed merger between media giants CBS and Viacom, and another between pharmaceutical companies Bristol-Myers Squibb and Celgene, are only the latest examples. Mergers and acquisitions activity has increased in the past few years: This trend toward ever-larger corporate behemoths has led many economists, politicians and activists to question whether the US economy is being taken over by monopolies. Further evidence of such a takeover comes from signs that price mark- ups are increasing, and corporate profits have been rising as a share of the economy. If competition really is dying, the US government needs to attack the problem somehow — blocking mergers, breakin...
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