In the United States, antitrust law is a collection of mostly federal laws that regulate the conduct and organization of businesses to promote competition and prevent unjustified monopolies. The three main U.S. antitrust statutes are the Sherman Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of 1914, and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. These acts serve three major functions. First, Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits price fixing and the operation of cartels, and prohibits other collusive practices that unreasonably restrain trade. Second, Section 7 of the Clayton Act restricts the mergers and acquisitions of organizations that may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly. Third, Section 2 of the Sherman Act prohibits monopolization.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction over federal civil antitrust enforcement with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. The agency is headquartered in the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC.
Colgate-Palmolive Company is an American multinational consumer products company headquartered on Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The company specializes in the production, distribution, and provision of household, health care, personal care, and veterinary products.
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Pub. L. 95-109; 91 Stat. 874, codified as 15 U.S.C. § 1692 –1692p, approved on September 20, 1977, is a consumer protection amendment, establishing legal protection from abusive debt collection practices, to the Consumer Credit Protection Act, as Title VIII of that Act. The statute's stated purposes are: to eliminate abusive practices in the collection of consumer debts, to promote fair debt collection, and to provide consumers with an avenue for disputing and obtaining validation of debt information in order to ensure the information's accuracy. The Act creates guidelines under which debt collectors may conduct business, defines rights of consumers involved with debt collectors, and prescribes penalties and remedies for violations of the Act. It is sometimes used in conjunction with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Kevin Mark Trudeau is an American author, salesman, and convicted fraudster known for promotion of his books and resulting legal cases involving the US Federal Trade Commission. His ubiquitous late-night infomercials, which promoted unsubstantiated health, diet, and financial advice, earned him a fortune but resulted in civil and criminal penalties for fraud, larceny, and contempt of court.
POM Wonderful, LLC is a private company which sells an eponymous brand of beverages and fruit extracts. It was founded in 2002 by the billionaire industrial agriculture couple Stewart and Lynda Rae Resnick. Through The Wonderful Company, their holding company, they are also affiliated with Teleflora, FIJI Water, pesticide manufacturer Suterra, and Paramount Agribusiness. In 2010, the company was warned by the FDA for making false health claims and for marketing statements that promoted their products as unauthorized drugs.
Philip Benjamin Heymann was an American legal scholar and federal prosecutor who headed the Criminal Division of the Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General during the Carter administration and was briefly Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration before he resigned over management and policy differences as well as perceived interference by the White House. He was involved internationally in supporting the rule of law in criminal justice systems. In domestic politics he was a vocal supporter of civil and political liberties and, as such, was actively critical of the George W. Bush administration, particularly its warrantless domestic spying program. Even before the September 11 attacks, Heymann studied and published on how prosecution of antiterror policies can be done consistent with the rule of law in a democratic society. He was later James Bar Ames Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School, where he began teaching in 1969.
Donald W. Barrett is the founder and president of ITV Direct, a company which produces infomercials for broadcast in the United States. Almost all are related to health and nutrition. Barret and ITC have been found guilty of making misleading health claims on multiple occasions.
Altria Group v. Good, 555 U.S. 70 (2008), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a state law prohibiting deceptive tobacco advertising was not preempted by a federal law regulating cigarette advertising.
Rise shaving cream, introduced by Carter-Wallace in 1949, was the first to be sold in an aerosol can. In 1963 the Federal Trade Commission charged Carter-Wallace with false advertising when a television commercial for Rise used "a phony substance resembling shaving cream."
Palmolive is an American multinational brand of a line of products produced by Colgate-Palmolive. The Palmolive brand grew from one product, Palmolive bar soap. Made of coconut, palm and olive oils, Palmolive bar soap was introduced in 1898. Originally, the bar soap floated like Proctor & Gamble's Ivory bar soap. By the turn of the 20th century, Palmolive bar soap was the world’s best-selling soap.
The history of United States antitrust law is generally taken to begin with the Sherman Antitrust Act 1890, although some form of policy to regulate competition in the market economy has existed throughout the common law's history. Although "trust" had a technical legal meaning, the word was commonly used to denote big business, especially a large, growing manufacturing conglomerate of the sort that suddenly emerged in great numbers in the 1880s and 1890s. The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 began a shift towards federal rather than state regulation of big business. It was followed by the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the Clayton Antitrust Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914, the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936, and the Celler-Kefauver Act of 1950.
FTC v. Actavis, Inc., 570 U.S. 136 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court held that the FTC could make an antitrust challenge under the rule of reason against a so-called pay-for-delay agreement, also referred to as a reverse payment patent settlement. Such an agreement is one in which a drug patentee pays another company, ordinarily a generic drug manufacturer, to stay out of the market, thus avoiding generic competition and a challenge to patent validity. The FTC sought to establish a rule that such agreements were presumptively illegal, but the Court ruled only that the FTC could bring a case under more general antitrust principles permitting a defendant to assert justifications for its actions under the rule of reason.
United States v. Google Inc., No. 3:12-cv-04177, is a case in which the United States District Court for the Northern District of California approved a stipulated order for a permanent injunction and a $22.5 million civil penalty judgment, the largest civil penalty the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ever won in history. The FTC and Google Inc. consented to the entry of the stipulated order to resolve the dispute which arose from Google's violation of its privacy policy. In this case, the FTC found Google liable for misrepresenting "privacy assurances to users of Apple's Safari Internet browser". It was reached after the FTC considered that through the placement of advertising tracking cookies in the Safari web browser, and while serving targeted advertisements, Google violated the 2011 FTC's administrative order issued in FTC v. Google Inc.
FTC v. Balls of Kryptonite is an enforcement action brought in 2009 by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in United States District Court for the Central District of California. The defendant was Jaivin Karnani, a Southern California man, his company Balls of Kryptonite LLC, and several other corporate names they did business as. In 2011 the FTC secured a court order barring Karnani and Balls of Kryptonite from engaging in many of the deceptive business practices that had brought him to the agency's attention.
Harry's is an American company that manufactures and sells shaving equipment and men's personal care products via online and retail channels. The company is known for their subscription service where customers receive new razor blades, shaving cream, and other grooming products by mail. Harry's is based in New York.
United States v. Singer Mfg. Co., 374 U.S. 174 (1963), was a 1963 decision of the Supreme Court, holding that the defendant Singer violated the antitrust laws by conspiring with two European competitors to exclude Japanese sewing machine competition from the US market. Singer effectuated the conspiracy by agreeing with the two European competitors to broaden US patent rights and concentrate them under Sanger's control in order to more effectively exclude the Japanese firms. A further aspect of the conspiracy was to fraudulently procure a US patent and use it as an exclusionary tool. This was the first Supreme Court decision holding that exclusionary use of a fraudulently procured patent could be an element supporting an antitrust claim.
FTC v. Motion Picture Advertising Service Co., 344 U.S. 392 (1953), was a 1953 decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that, where exclusive output contracts used by one company "and the three other major companies have foreclosed to competitors 75 percent of all available outlets for this business throughout the United States" the practice is "a device which has sewed up a market so tightly for the benefit of a few [that it] falls within the prohibitions of the Sherman Act, and is therefore an 'unfair method of competition' " under § 5 of the FTC Act. In so ruling, the Court extended the analysis under § 3 of the Clayton Act of requirements contracts that it made in the Standard Stations case to output contracts brought under the Sherman or FTC Acts.
United States v. Parke, Davis & Co., 362 U.S. 29 (1960), was a 1960 decision of the United States Supreme Court limiting the so-called Colgate doctrine, which substantially insulates unilateral refusals to deal with price-cutters from the antitrust laws. The Parke, Davis & Co. case held that, when a company goes beyond "the limited dispensation" of Colgate by taking affirmative steps to induce adherence to its suggested prices, it puts together a combination among competitors to fix prices in violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act. In addition, the Court held that when a company abandons an illegal practice because it knows the US Government is investigating it and contemplating suit, it is an abuse of discretion for the trial court to hold the case that follows moot and dismiss it without granting relief sought against the illegal practice.
