International Securities Exchange (ISE) took its campaign to end exclusive index licensing deals to another level last week when it announced it was going to court in order to allow it to offer Dow Jones and Standard & Poor's (S&P) index contracts.
ISE has asked a federal court to allow the exchange to offer Dow Jones Industrial Index and S&P 500 Index options without a licensing deal with the respective companies. Both contracts were exclusively licensed to Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and represented a large portion of the exchange's volume.
The move came after four years of no action taken on the matter by Securities Exchange Commission.
ISE executives have long argued that exclusive licenses such as the Dow and S&P 500 index options are bad...