United States antitrust law seeks to encourage free and open competition by preventing exclusionary conduct that threatens the competitive process. Intellectual property rights (IPR) laws, by contrast, are designed to encourage innovation by granting IPR holders a limited statutory right to exclude competition. Compared to many jurisdictions, United States law balances this tension more frequently in favour of the IPR holder. An extract from The Antitrust Review of the Americas 2015 - www.GlobalCompetitionReview.com.