Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

Regulation Of Business - Sherman Act - Expansion Of Per Se Doctrine Over Tying Agreements, Max H. Bergman S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Through congressional grant defendant's predecessor acquired approximately forty million acres of land, consisting of every alternate section in a twenty to forty mile wide belt on each side of its railroad track from Lake Superior to Puget Sound. Defendant sold about thirty-seven million acres of its holdings and leased the balance. Many of the sales contracts and most of the leases, together covering several million acres of land, contained "preferential routing" clauses which compelled the grantee or lessee to ship all commodities produced or manufactured on the land over defendant's lines, unless competitors' rates were lower or, in some instances, …

The Adequacy Of State Insurance Rate Regulation: The Mccarran-Ferguson Act In Historical Perspective, Spencer L. Kimball, Ronald N. Boyce

Michigan Law Review

Any substantial inquiry into the functioning of the insurance commissioner in American society poses the question, at the threshold of the inquiry, whether state regulatory power over the insurance business is likely to continue, or whether insurance will fall increasingly under the aegis of the federal government. This article seeks to ascertain the minimum conditions for the permanent preservation of state regulatory power over the insurance business, and to determine whether they are now satisfied. These conditions may be summarily stated: the Congress of the United States has shown its willingness to apply federal antitrust and marketing legislation to the …

Regulation Of Business - Refusals To Deal - Use To Effectuate Resale Price Maintenance, Raymond J. Dittrich, Jr. S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

This comment will examine the legal questions arising from a manufacturer's exercise of his right to maintain resale prices by refusing to deal with price cutters in an attempt to determine whether this exists only as an abstract right, or whether it can be translated into legally effective business practices.

Exclusive Arrangements And Refusal To Deal Problems, Reynolds C. Seitz

Vanderbilt Law Review

Justification for including a discussion on exclusive dealing arrangements and on refusal to deal decisions in a symposium devoted to trade practices rests upon the practical consideration that there exists on the part of business management a considerable interest in the two commercial tools.

Business executives find appeal in the prospect of using a contract calling for exclusive dealing.' Those engaged in commerce have for a variety of purposes frequently employed as a lever the refusal to deal.

Possible antitrust implications in the use of the two devices has not always been understood by business. In recent years, however, the …

Regulation Of Business - Sherman Act - Effect Of Trade-Mark On Scope Of Relevant Market, Robert H. Kapp S. Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Defendants are American corporations marketing trade-marked toilet goods obtained from their French affiliates. In each case the French company transferred to the American company trademark rights covering imported products. Pursuant to section 526 of the Tariff Act of 1930 defendants filed with the Bureau of Customs certificates of registration of these trade-marks for the purpose of preventing the competitive importation of products bearing the same trade-marks. In an action by the government charging that utilization of section 526 by each defendant constitutes an attempt to monopolize and a monopolization of the importation and sale of these trade-marked commodities in violation …

Senate Bill No. Ii And Antitrust Policy, Kenneth S. Carlston

Vanderbilt Law Review

The history of the judicial interpretation of the Sherman Act' is a history of the legislative process working through the mechanisms of the judicial process. Starting with an act phrased in the most general of terms, nearly seventy years of judicial administration have developed a system of interdependent postulates analogous to legislative norms. None of these postulates can be considered as prevailing over all others. But the binding thread of the Sherman Act is the proposition that the market shall be dynamic, manifesting sufficient energy through price competition by the organizations participating in the market to ensure that the advances …

Patents - Misues Doctrine - Multiple Licenses With Price-Fixing Provisios As Shermen Act Violation, Herbert A. Bernhard S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

In a suit for infringement of a moire process patent, relief was denied by the trial court partially on the ground that plaintiff had misused its patent by violating section 1 of the Sherman Act. Plaintiff had licensed two other moire finishers to use the patented process. Each license contained a proviso that plaintiff could specify the prices the licensee was to charge its customers for finishing cloth with the patented process. On appeal, held, affirmed. It is a violation of the antitrust laws for a patentee to issue more than one license containing price-fixing provisions. Newburgh Moire Co. …

Antitrust - Resale Price Maintenance - Legality Of Fair Trade Contracts Made By Integrated Firm, John A. Ziegler S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Defendant-appellee manufactures its own brand-name line of drug products and is also the largest drug wholesaler in the United States. Its manufactured products are sold through appellee's own wholesale division and to independent wholesalers and retailers. In 1951 appellee entered into resale price maintenance contracts with these independent wholesalers, most of whom competed with appellee's wholesale divisions. The Government then brought an action for an injunction under section 4 of the Sherman Act, restraining the further use of resale price contracts by appellee on the ground that these contracts constituted illegal price fixing under section 1 of the act. The …

Regulation Of Business - Sherman Act - Administration And Enforcement - A Re-Analysis Of Consent Decrees, Paul R. Haerle S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

This comment will deal with a review of the history, nature, and use of the consent decree, an analysis of some of the more recent and important decrees, and a discussion of the crucial problem, raised especially by the Report of the Attorney General's National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws, of the constitutional and statutory bases (or lack thereof) for the relief granted by consent decrees.

Monopoly In America, By Walter Adams And Horace M. Gray, Phil C. Neal

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Regulation Of Business - Sherman Act - Patent Pool Agreements Which Restricts Fields Of Use, Martin F. Roston S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

DeVlieg, the owner of three major patents in the machine tool field, licensed his inventions to several machine tool manufacturers. Subsequently, he and the licensees formed a new corporation, Associated Patents, Inc., a patent holding company, to which he assigned his patents. Each party to the agreement owned an equal share of API. The agreement contained provisions for the granting back to API of any improvement patents acquired by the parties and it also restricted the use of the patents by each party to carefully circumscribed fields of use. Held, a patent pool agreement restricting fields of use is …

Regulation Of Business - Boxing And Theater Now Within Scope Of The Sherman Act, Norman A. Zilber S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

The United States instituted two civil antitrust actions under section 4 of the Sherman Act claiming that defendants were acting in restraint of trade in their respective fields. Defendant Shubert was engaged in the multistate business of producing, booking, and presenting legitimate theatrical attractions. Defendant International Boxing Club was engaged in the business of promoting professional boxing contests, also on a multistate basis, with an alleged 25 percent of its revenue being derived from the interstate sale of radio, television, and motion picture rights. The district court dismissed both complaints on the authority of Federal Baseball Club v. National League …

The Antitrust Laws In Foregin Commerce, Robert A. Nitschke

Michigan Law Review

The Sherman Act applies to trade or commerce "with foreign nations." Are there differences in the act's application to foreign trade compared with its application to domestic commerce? The Attorney General's National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws was constituted at a time when this question was pressing for an answer.

During the 1920's and 1930's, the international cartel movement was in full Hood. American companies participated in some of these international arrangements, often in the belief that they were a necessary condition for world trade and upon the legal premise that restrictions adjunctive to patent and know-how licenses were …

Antitrust Policy In Distribution, Kendall B. Debevoise

Michigan Law Review

The American genius lies quite as much in distribution as in manufacturing. Other peoples have demonstrated equal or greater creative ability in many fields. And it is debatable whether their talents are any less at mass production given adequate economic demand. But they have nowhere shown the American genius for distribution. It is axiomatic that if you manufacture in Detroit and your potential customer lives in New York, you need mutual friends. We seem to have figured out better ways to provide better friends for this purpose than any other nation.

But manufacturing came first. Someone had to build a …

Antitrust And Labor, Russell A. Smith

Michigan Law Review

The thirteen-page treatment of the subject of "organized labor" in the Report of the Attorney General's National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws shows that the committee approached the subject gingerly, and that the counsel of moderation prevailed. The views of those who would change the national policy favoring (or at least tolerating) the existing institutions of trade unionism and collective bargaining by subjecting unions to "monopoly" standards are not discussed in the Report. The result is a limited and generalized approach, which holds that some kinds of union practices "aimed directly at commercial market restraints" run counter to …

Antitrust Administration And Enforcement, John T. Chadwell

Michigan Law Review

The importance of the nation's antitrust policy requires that administration and enforcement powers and techniques be equal to the huge task of effectively safeguarding competition. The recommendations of the Attorney General's Committee represent a statesmanlike effort to balance the need for effective enforcement with the need for the preservation of fairness and the conservation of time and resources in antitrust litigation. Some of the recommendations will undoubtedly engender heated controversy; others seem relatively uncontroversial.

Many individual topics are dealt with in the Report of the committee and space does not permit comment upon all of them. The following discussion is …

The Patent-Antitrust Problem, Bartholomew Diggins

Michigan Law Review

The Patent-Antitrust section of the Report of the Attorney General's National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws is an excellent analysis of the existing law and is an invaluable handbook for practitioners in this difficult field. The writer's approach to the problem is different from that of the committee and before commenting specifically on the Report it is only fair to state the writer's views of the problem lest differences in viewpoint give the impression of criticism of the Report.

In any approach to the patent-antitrust problem there is a basic question: does a "patent-antitrust problem" exist? The Report …

Basic Antitrust Concepts, Kenneth S. Carlston

Michigan Law Review

It is the function of this paper to summarize and evaluate chapter I of the Report of the Attorney General's National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws. It will first be necessary to note briefly the circumstances attendant upon the appointment of the committee, its delegated function, its conception of its task and its working methods. No helpful critique of its accomplishments can be made unless its purpose and mode of operation are taken as the starting point. While many tasks remain to be done in the study of the antitrust laws, the committee's work should be appraised only …

Product Competition In The Relevant Market Under The Sherman Act, David Macdonald

Michigan Law Review

The correct delimitation of the relevant market is the problem to be examined here. First the legal development of market concepts will be traced. Then, with the objective of coalescing the legal and economic concepts of .the market, a test will be proposed with which to measure the correct market in any given case.

Lectures On Federal Antitrust Laws, University Of Michigan Law School

Summer Institute on International and Comparative Law

The papers delivered at the 1953 Institute deal chiefly with current problems and policy questions under three major federal antitrust laws - the Sherman Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, and the Clayton Act, including the Robinson-Patman Amendment. These statutes affect the daily operations of all sizes and types of American business. Judicial interpretations and the administration and enforcement of these laws involve both legal and economic criteria and tests of competition and monopoly. The Institute provided a forum for authoritative analysis of these aspects in order to create a better understanding of the antitrust laws as one of the …

The Treble Damage Bonanza: New Doctrines Of Damages In Private Antitrust Suits, Homer Clark

Michigan Law Review

Section 7 of the Sherman Act, as amended by section 4 of the Clayton Act, gives a private right of action for treble damages to persons injured "in . . .business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws. . . ." The lucrative possibilities of this section for plaintiffs and their attorneys have recently received sufficient notoriety to arouse curiosity concerning the legal doctrines involved.

The purposes of the section have been said to include compensation for those affected by violations, prevention of violations, and assistance for the government in discovering and bringing before the courts …

Regulation Of Business--Robinson-Patman Act--Defenses Of In Pari Delicto And Changed Market Conditions, William K. Davenport

Michigan Law Review

A group of businessmen in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, organized a boycott against all bread except that baked by plaintiff, the sole baker in Santa Rosa, to induce him not to move his bakery out of town; plaintiff agreed to this plan. Defendant, who sold in interstate commerce, thereupon halved his bread prices in Santa Rosa while maintaining them in other towns, in order to defeat the boycott and preserve the town as a market. Plaintiff brought an action for treble damages under section 2(a) of the Robinson-Patman Act for injuries suffered from this price discrimination. The federal district court …

Dissolution, Divorcement, Divestiture: The Pyrrhic Victories Of Antitrust, Walter Adams

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Resale Price Maintenance, Stanley D. Rose

Vanderbilt Law Review

There was a tide in the affairs of men that was taken at its flood by the National Association of Retail Druggists--and it led on to fortune. For this band of little men the Miller-Tydings Amendment to the Sherman Act I was the end of a thirty years war. Enjoined in 1907 from attempting to force up retail price margins and maintain retail drug prices at a uniform level, this association joined with other groups desirous of achieving similar ends in an effort, year after year, to persuade Congress to permit the making of contracts between manufacturers and retailers that …

Antitrust Laws And The Right To Know, Philip Marcus

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A New Phase Of The Antitrust Law, Robert W. Harbeson

Michigan Law Review

The divergence between the economic and legal concepts of monopoly and the consequences thereof have been emphasized by various writers in recent years. Monopoly in economics means control of the market; that is, the ability of a seller by increasing or decreasing his output to affect the price of the product sold. Moreover, monopoly is recognized as being a matter of degree, depending upon the number of buyers and sellers of a commodity and the availability of adequate substitutes, ranging from pure monopoly through duopoly, oligopoly and monopolistic competition. By contrast, as Professor Mason has pointed out, "The term monopoly …

Trade Regulation: The American Medical Ass'n Case

Indiana Law Journal

Notes and Comments: Trade Regulation

Constitutional Law-Validity Of Marketing Program Established Under The California Agricultural Prorate Act, Malcolm M. Davisson

Michigan Law Review

Appellee, a producer and packer of raisins in California, alleging that enforcement of the proration marketing agreement established under the California Agricultural Prorate Act would prevent him from fulfilling sales contracts and from purchasing for sale and selling raisins in interstate commerce, brought suit in the district court to enjoin enforcement of the program for marketing the 1940 raisin crop. The marketing program was challenged as in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the commerce clause of the United States Constitution and as in conflict with and superseded by the Federal Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937. The district …

Trade Restraints - Resale Price Maintenance - Use Of Competitors As Agents, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Masonite Corporation, the principal defendant, manufactured and sold for construction purposes a patented wood product known as "hardboard." The other defendants sold, and many of them manufactured, building materials, several having patents that competed with Masonite. After a short period of patent litigation between Masonite and one of its chief competitors, a plan was devised and gradually extended to the other defendants, by which the latter were constituted the del credere agents of Masonite to sell its product at prices and according to terms which it should establish. The agents were not to use the trademarks of Masonite; and the …

Labor Law - Application Of The Antitrust Laws To Labor Combinations, Eric Stein

Michigan Law Review

In an indictment under the .first paragraph of the Sherman Act the government charged the defendant union of electrical workers with forming an illegal combination to boycott electrical equipment manufactured in other states whereby such products were either totally excluded from the local market, or restrictions as to rewiring or reassembling were imposed upon their use such as to constitute an undue burden on interstate commerce. In a separate indictment the United States accused the same union of unlawfully conspiring with the associations of contractors and local manufacturers of electrical equipment for a similar purpose and with a like effect …