 |
| Competition law |
| Basic concepts |
|
|
| Anti-competitive practices |
|
|
| Laws and doctrines |
|
United States
Europe
- European Community
competition law
- Irish Competition Law
- Competition Act 1998 (U. Competition law history refers to attempts by governments to regulate Competitive markets for goods and services leading up to the modern competition or Antitrust In Economics and Business ethics, a coercive monopoly is a business concern that prohibits competitors from entering the field with the natural result being that Natural monopoly is a term used in Economics to refer to two different things In Economics and especially in the theory of Competition, barriers to entry are obstacles in the path of a firm which wants to enter a given Market In Economics, market power is the ability of a firm to alter the Market price of a good or service In Competition law, before deciding whether companies have significant Market power which would justify government intervention the test of Small but Significant and Non-transitory In Competition law the Relevant market defines the market in which one or more goods compete Merger control refers to the procedure of reviewing Mergers and acquisitions under Antitrust / competition law Anti-competitive practices are Business or Government practices that prevent and/or reduce Competition in a Market (see Restraint of trade Collusion is an agreement usually secretive which occurs between two or more persons to deceive mislead or defraud others of their legal rights or to obtain an objective forbidden A cartel is a formal (explicit agreement among firms Cartels usually occur in an oligopolistic industry, where there is a small number of sellers and usually involve Price fixing is an agreement between business competitors to sell the same product or service at the same price Product bundling is a Marketing strategy that involves offering several products for sale as one combined product Tying is the practice of making the sale of one good (the tying good to the De facto or De jure customer conditional on the purchase of a second distinctive Refusal to deal is one of several Anti-competitive practices forbidden in countries which have Free market economies In Competition law, a group boycott is a type of Secondary boycott in which two or more competitors in a Relevant market refuse to conduct business Exclusive dealing refers to when a retailer or wholesaler is ‘tied’ to purchase from a supplier on the understanding that no other distributor will be appointed or receive supplies Bid rigging is an illegal agreement between two or more competitors Dividing territories (also Market division) is an agreement by two companies to stay out of each other's way and reduce competition in the agreed-upon territories Conscious parallelism is a term used in Competition law to describe Price-fixing between competitors in an Oligopoly that occurs without an actual spoken Predatory pricing (also known as destroyer pricing) is the practice of a firm selling a product at very low price with the intent of driving competitors out of the Market In United States patent law, patent misuse is an Affirmative defense used in patent litigation when a Defendant has been accused to have Copyright misuse is an equitable defense against Copyright infringement in the United States based on the unreasonable conduct of United States antitrust law is the body of Laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior (monopoly and Unfair business practices. The Sherman Antitrust Act ( Sherman Act, July 2, 1890, ch 647,) was the first United States Federal statute to limit Cartels and The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 ( October 15[[ 914]] ch 323, codified at,) was enacted in the United States to add further substance to the U The Robinson-Patman Act of 1936 (or Anti-Justice League Discrimination Act,) is a United States federal law that prohibits what were considered at the time of passage The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 (15 USC §§ 41-58 as amended) established the Federal Trade Commission (FTC a Bipartisan body of five members The Merger guidelines are a set of internal rules promulgated by the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ in conjunction with the The essential facilities doctrine (sometimes also referred to as the essential facility doctrine) is a Legal doctrine which describes a particular type of claim of The Noerr-Pennington doctrine is a doctrine of United States Antitrust law set forth by the United States Supreme Court in a pair of cases which The rule of reason is a doctrine developed by the United States Supreme Court in its interpretation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. European Community competition law is one of the areas of authority of the European Union. Irish Competition Law is the Irish body of legal rules designed to ensure fairness and freedom in the Marketplace. The Competition Act 1998 is the current major source of competition policy in the UK along with Enterprise Act 2002. K. )
Australia
|
| Enforcement authorities and organizations |
|
|
| edit box |
The term "monopolization" refers to an offense under Section 2 of the American Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in 1890. The Trade Practices Act 1974 is an act of the Parliament of Australia. The International Competition Network is an informal virtual network that seeks to facilitate cooperation between Competition law authorities globally A competition regulator is a Government agency, typically a statutory authority, sometimes called an economic regulator, which regulates and enforces The Sherman Antitrust Act ( Sherman Act, July 2, 1890, ch 647,) was the first United States Federal statute to limit Cartels and Section 2 states that any person "who shall monopolize . . . any part of the trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations shall be deemed guilty of a felony. In Common law legal systems a felony is a serious Crime, often contrasted with a Misdemeanor. " Section 2 also forbids "attempts to monopolize" and "conspiracies to monopolize. "
Under long-established precedent, the offense of monopolization under Section 2 has two elements. First, that the defendant possesses monopoly power in a properly-defined market and second that the defendant obtained or maintained that power through conduct deemed unlawfully exclusionary. The mere fact that conduct disadvantages rivals does not, without more, constitute the sort of exclusionary conduct that satisfies this second element. Instead, such conduct must exclude rivals on some basis other than efficiency.
For several decades courts drew the line between efficient and inefficient exclusion by asking whether the conduct under scrutiny was "competition on the merits. " Courts equated such competition on the merits with unilateral conduct such as product improvement, the realization of economies of scale, innovation, and the like. Such conduct was lawful per se, since it constituted the normal operation of economic forces that a free economy should encourage. At the same time, courts condemned as "unlawful exclusion" tying contracts, exclusive dealing, and other agreements that disadvantaged rivals. Exclusive dealing refers to when a retailer or wholesaler is ‘tied’ to purchase from a supplier on the understanding that no other distributor will be appointed or receive supplies See, e. g. , United States v. United Shoe Machinery Co. , 110 F. 295 (D. Mass. 1953). This distinction reflected the economic theory of the time, which saw no beneficial purposes for what Professor Oliver Williamson has called non-standard contracts.
More recently, courts have retained the safe harbor for "competition on the merits. " Moreover, the Supreme Court has clarified the standards governing claims of predatory pricing. At the same time, they have relaxed the standards governing other conduct by monopolists. For instance, non-standard contracts that exclude rivals are now lawful if supported by a "valid business reason," unless the plaintiff can establish that the defendant could achieve the same benefits by means of a less restrictive alternative. See Eastman Kodak v. Image Technical Services, 504 U. S. 451 (1992).
Bibliography
Philip Areeda and Donald F. Turner, Predatory Pricing and Related Practices Under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 88 Harv. L. Rev. 697 (1975)
Herbert Hovenkamp, The Monopolization Offense, 61 Ohio St. Herbert Hovenkamp holds the Ben and Dorothy Willie Chair at the University of Iowa College of Law. L. J. 1035 (2000)
Thomas Piraino, Identifying Monopolists’ Exclusionary Conduct Under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 75 NYU L. Rev. 809 (2000)
John E. Lopatka and William H. Page, Monopolization, Innovation, and Consumer Welfare, 69 George Washington University L. Rev. 367, 387-92 (2001)
Einer Elhaughe, Defining Better Monopolization Standards, 56 Stanford L. Rev. 253 (2003)
Alan Meese, Monopolization, Exclusion, and the Theory of The Firm, 89 Minnesota L. Rev. 743 (2005)
© 2009 citizendia.org; parts available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License, from http://en.wikipedia.org
network: | |
