Law Commons^™

The Resale Price Maintenance Compromise:A Presumption Of Illegality, Michael D. Mckibben

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note explores several problems with recent RPM decisions: (1) the effect of the per se rule on producers' rights to control their marketing strategies; (2) inconsistent use of the plural action requirement as a foil for avoiding or invoking the per se rule; (3) the suppression of benign or pro-competitive activities because of the rule; (4) the difficulties with free rider marketing; and (5) the obstacles to advice and planning that recent decisions have created. This Note contends that a new standard, a rebuttable presumption against legality, would alleviate most, if not all, problems that the inflexible per se …

European And American Antitrust Regulation Of Pricing By Monopolists, Gregory B. Adams

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Article 86 of the Treaty of Rome outlaws any "abuse ... of a dominant position within the common market or a substantial part of it." The EEC prohibition is similar to the developed meaning of "monopolization" in section 2 of the Sherman Act, requiring both market power and improper conduct. This Article analyzes the type of conduct that is considered improper: specifically, the pricing practices that constitute abuse under article 86, or monopolization under section 2.

Article 86 provides examples that help determine what abuse is:

Such abuse may, in particular, consist in:

(a) directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase …