Author: Jarod Bona In an earlier article, we discussed Leegin and the controversial issue of resale-price maintenance agreements under the federal antitrust laws. We’ve also written about these agreements here. And these issues often come up when discussing Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) Policies, which you can read about here. As…
Contrary to the belief of many of today’s businesspeople, antitrust law’s coverage of distribution did not start with Amazon or even the Internet. For decades, manufacturers have sold their products to resellers of all types to increase the distribution of their products. Manufacturers always have been interested in how their…
Author: Steven Cernak Like many crisis situations, the Coronavirus Pandemic has created concerns and even outcry about price gouging for certain products. If your company manufactures one of these products and your dealers and retailers have suddenly jacked up prices for them, what can you do? Manufacturers are often concerned…
Author: Steven Cernak While I was the in-house antitrust lawyer for General Motors, outside counsel on several occasions suggested to me that GM should “institute a Colgate program” or “a minimum advertised price (MAP) program.” I am confident that all those lawyers could have helped build a fine Colgate program…
Author: Jarod Bona You may not realize this, but a lot of people don’t like lawyers. We even have our own genre of comedy that predates Shakespeare: lawyer jokes. Here is a common example: What do you call 1000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start! When you…
Author: Luis Blanquez On July 24, 2018, the European Commission fined manufacturers Asus, Denon & Marantz, Philips and Pioneer for over €111 million for restricting the ability of online retailers to set their own retail prices for a variety of widely-used consumer electronics products. Background The Commission’s e-commerce sector inquiry,…
Author: Luis Blanquez In our prior article, we discussed the European Commission’s final report of its study of the EU’s e-commerce market for consumer goods and digital content. In this article we describe EU investigations and enforcement actions that arose from the EC’s final e-commerce market study. While the final…
Author: Luis Blanquez BACKGROUND Over the past two years, the European Commission (“EC”) has been scrutinizing the e-commerce market of consumer goods and digital content in the European Union. This is a key step on the Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy to improve access to digital goods and services. Such…