He said big oil companies had pressured lenders, hoping to keep a tight lock on the market by blocking independent competitors.

"The merger will allow cable rates to keep spiraling out of control and enable the merged company to potentially block competitors from challenging cable dominance," he said.

When Horace Bury's Fyunch(click) appeared, Byzantium was able to block other competitors and acquire her.

Clearly there are going to be real intellectual property issues in exactly what it owns and to what degree it can block competitors from copying its look and feel.

Many of Mexico's leading industries are dominated by one or two companies that use their market power to block new competitors.

One is that technology companies in the last few years have become a lot more aggressive in using patents and copyrights to block competitors.

The study also faults the industry for "targeting" regional and start-up airlines with practices like temporarily adding flights to block upstart competitors.

Later, the Media Access Project claimed that the incumbent companies that already owned spectrum access blocked new competitors from entering the market.

If they could block competitors from using any kind of multitouch interface, it surely would be a big deal.

Secondly, we should limit the monopolies of international companies which use their patents to block European competitors.