Law Commons^™

Bundled Discounts, Loyalty Discounts And Antitrust Policy, Roger D. Blair, Thomas Knight

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this paper, we explore the competitive significance of both bundled and loyalty discounts. The paper proceeds as follows. In Section II, we examine the antitrust treatment of both bundled discounts and loyalty discounts in the United States. In Section III, we examine bundled discounts and discuss their competitive significance. In Section IV, we examine loyalty discounts as well as their competitive significance. In Section V, we suggest that the courts evaluate bundled discounts and loyalty discounts under the Rule of Reason. In Section VI, we close with some concluding remarks and policy recommendations.

Tying And Bundled Discounts: An Equilibrium Analysis Of Antitrust Liability Tests, Melanie S. Williams

Melanie S. Williams

Courts have struggled with determining when bundled discounts constitute unlawfully anticompetitive behavior. The current circuit split reflects an absence of consensus. This lack of legal guidance creates uncertainty in the market, with firms being given inconsistent – and sometimes contradictory - standards on how to avoid antitrust liability.

For the most part, we consider a standard paradigm for analyzing bundled discounts. Suppose that there are two firms. Firm 1 produces a monopoly product, A, and also another product, B, which competes with another version of B produced by Firm 2. The concern is the extent to which the price paid …

Eighth Circuit Bungles Bundled Discounts: The Court Avoids Resolving Bundled Discounts Note , Melissa A. Cullmann

Missouri Law Review

In Southeast Missouri Hospital v. C.R. Bard, Inc., the Eighth Circuit passed on an opportunity to choose a bundled discount test and instead focused on the proper market for the products at issue. This Note first explores the bundled discounts and contracts at issue in the instant decision. It then provides a detailed explanation of bundled discounts and the various tests proposed for them, as well as an explanation of the Eighth Circuit’s precedent concerning bundled discounts. The Note concludes by analyzing the instant decision and discussing why the court should have addressed bundled discounts in its opinion and the …

Tying Noncompetitive Goods, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Many of the classic tying cases involved tied products that were common staples such as button fasteners, canned ink, dry ice, or salt. These products were sold in competitive markets, presumably at prices very close to cost. For most of them the most likely explanations for the tie were quality control or price discrimination, both with competitively benign results in the great majority of situations. When the tied good is sold in a noncompetitive market, however, an additional consumer welfare enhancing result is likely to obtain – namely, the elimination of double marginalization, which occurs when separate sellers of complementary …

Appropriate Liability Rules For Tying And Bundled Discounting: A Response To Professor Elhauge, Thomas A. Lambert

Thomas A. Lambert

Professor Einer Elhauge’s highly acclaimed article, Tying, Bundled Discounts, and the Death of the Single Monopoly Profit Theory, 123 Harv. L. Rev. 397 (Dec. 2009), contests two propositions on which efficiency-minded antitrust scholars have largely agreed: (1) that there should be no tying liability absent substantial tied market foreclosure (a position contrary to the legal status quo), and (2) that courts should recognize a safe harbor for any bundled discount that results in above-cost pricing that could be matched by an equally efficient, single-product rival. Elhauge maintains that tie-ins that do not cause substantial tied market foreclosure may nonetheless occasion …

Appropriate Liability Rules For Tying And Bundled Discounting, Thom Lambert

Faculty Publications

This article asserts a comprehensive response to Elhauge’s provocative arguments. With respect to tying, the article shows that governing Supreme Court precedent does not deem the non-foreclosure “power” effects of the practice to be anticompetitive and that those effects are unlikely to reduce social welfare in the long run, especially after accounting for dynamic efficiencies. With respect to bundled discounting, the article shows that Elhauge’s proposed liability rule is both inapposite to consumer harm and inadministrable and that both “linked” market foreclosure and a form of below-cost pricing are necessary for anticompetitive harm and should therefore be prerequisites to antitrust …

The Obama Administration And Section Two Of The Sherman Act, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

During the administration of President George W. Bush, the Antitrust Division was not enthusiastic about use of §2 of the Sherman Act to pursue anticompetitive single-firm conduct. Indeed, its most prominent contribution on the issue was the Antitrust Division’s §2 Report, which the Obama Antitrust Division withdrew only eight months after it was issued.This withdrawal was entirely in keeping with candidate Obama’s repeated promises to reinvigorate antitrust enforcement.

This essay analyzes the current state of antitrust and makes recommendations concerning structures and practices where increased §2 enforcement is warranted and those where it is not. Wise use of enforcement dollars …

Tying Arrangements And Antitrust Harm, Erik Hovenkamp, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

A tying arrangement is a seller’s requirement that a customer may purchase its “tying” product only by taking its “tied” product. In a variable proportion tie the purchaser can vary the amount of the tied product. For example, a customer might purchase a single printer, but either a contract or technological design requires the purchase of varying numbers of printer cartridges from the same manufacturer.

Such arrangements are widely considered to be price discrimination devices, but their economic effects have been controversial. Tying has been attacked on the theory that price discrimination of this sort reduces consumer welfare. We show …

The Federal Trade Commission And The Sherman Act, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The FTC has explicit antitrust authority to enforce the Clayton Act, although not the Sherman Act. More than a half century ago, however, the Supreme Court held that the FTC Act’s prohibition of “unfair methods of competition” reaches everything the Sherman Act reaches and also a “penumbra” of practices that are not technical Sherman Act violations. That view, which had fallen into disuse in recent decades, is now being revived.

This essay defends a limited version of that “penumbra” view and suggests several applications. First, while both Sherman Act provisions are open ended in their coverage, they have limitations. Section …

Weyerhaeuser And The Search For Antitrust's Holy Grail, Thom Lambert

Faculty Publications

A general definition of exclusionary conduct has become a sort of Holy Grail for antitrust scholars. At present, four proposed definitions appear most promising: (1) conduct that could exclude an equally efficient rival; (2) conduct that raises rivals' costs unjustifiably; (3) conduct that, on balance, impairs consumer welfare by creating market power without providing countervailing consumer benefits; and (4) conduct that makes no economic sense but for its exclusionary effect on rivals.