Author: Steven Cernak When I first started practicing antitrust law in the “80’s, the Robinson-Patman Act was already an object of derision.¹ With Chicago School thinking riding high in academia and the courts and antitrust law’s focus shifting to effects on consumers, not rivals, RP cases seemed to be dwindling…
Authors: Aaron Gott and Nick McNamara Antitrust conspiracies, like most conspiracies, are typically carried out in secret and often actively concealed by their participants for many years. But the statute of limitations for antitrust claims is only four years. So what happens if you discover that you were harmed by…
Author: Jarod Bona Yes, in certain narrow circumstances, refusing to do business with a competitor violates Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which regulates monopolies, attempts at monopoly, and exclusionary conduct. This probably seems odd—don’t businesses have the freedom to decide whether to do business with someone, especially when that…
Author: Luis Blanquez Luis Blanquez is an antitrust attorney at Bona Law with fifteen years of competition experience in different jurisdictions within the European Union such as Spain, France, Belgium and the UK. You can read our article about the elements for monopolization under U.S. antitrust law here. We also…
In the most recent issue of The Antitrust Law Journal, attorney Sean P. Gates describes several possible approaches to these discounts, analyzing the good and the bad for each. His article, Antitrust by Analogy: Developing Rules for Loyalty Rebates and Bundled Discounts, is really quite good. I identified this article…
This article is cross-posted in both English and French at Thibault Schrepel’s outstanding competition blog Le Concurrentialiste. Like most antitrust issues today, questions about loyalty discounts are relevant across the globe as competition regimes and courts grapple with the best way to address them. Companies like to reward their best customers with discounts. It happens…
The Internet didn’t fall down after my first post, so I thought I’d try another. In the US, certain conduct is so obviously anticompetitive that antitrust law labels it per se illegal. These restraints lack redeeming pro-competitive value in almost all instances, so the law allows plaintiffs an important short-cut…