THE APPLICATION OF U.S. ANTITRUST LAW TO FOREIGN CONDUCT: HAS HARTFORD FIRE EXTINGUISHED CONSIDERATIONS OF COMITY? SCOTT A. BURR* 1. INTRODUCTION The exercise of jurisdiction by U.S. courts over activities occurring outside the borders of the United States has sparked difficult questions about the appropriate reach of U.S. law in a shrinking world. The application of U.S. antitrust law to the behavior of foreign or multinational entities abroad has created the most incendiary and confusing of situations. Addressing this problem is difficult because the major industrial nations have markedly different antitrust laws and policies in these matters' and the relevant U.S. antitrust statutes contain only cryptic clues as to their territorial scope.' As a result, U.S. courts have struggled to sketch out the territorial reach of antitrust laws case by case. The courts' numerous specific rules have provided little guidance to the foreign parties who must contend with them. Indeed, opinions applying the rules to activities abroad have been scorned by foreign courts,' have triggered the issuing of conflicting "J.D., 1988, The Dickinson School of Law; LL.M. in International and Comparative Law 1993, Georgetown University Law Center. The author practices complex commercial litigation and international law in Philadelphia. 1 See Rio Tinto Zinc Corp. v. Westinghouse Elec. Corp., [1978] 2 W.L.R. 81, 94 (H.L.) (Wilberforce, L.) ("It is axiomatic that in antitrust matters the policy of one state may be to defend what it is the policy of another state to attack."). 2 The Sherman Act begins by referring to every "contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations." 15 U.S.C. § 1 (1988). The Clayton Act defines "commerce" as "trade or commerce among the several States and with foreign nations." Id. § 12. ' See British Nylon Spinners Ltd. v. Imperial Chem. Indus., [1954] 3 W.L.R. 505 (Ch.) (declaring that an order of a U.S. court enforcing an antitrust decree by enjoining the English defendant from performing its contracts to assign to English plaintiffs exclusive manufacturing and marketing rights is "an assertion of an extraterritorial jurisdiction which we do not recognize"). (221)