In the United States,antitrust law is a collection of mostly federal laws that regulate the conduct and organization of businesses in order 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.
Price fixing is an anticompetitive agreement between participants on the same side in a market to buy or sell a product,service,or commodity only at a fixed price,or maintain the market conditions such that the price is maintained at a given level by controlling supply and demand.
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 law enforcement with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. The agency is headquartered in the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington,DC.
SK Telecom Co.,Ltd.,abbreviated as SKT is a South Korean wireless telecommunications operator and former film distributor and is part of the SK Group,one of the country's largest chaebols. It leads the local market with 50.5 percent share as of 2008. SK Telecom is the largest wireless carrier in South Korea,with 27.019 million subscribers as of Q4 2017.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is the chief competition regulator of the Government of Australia,located within the Department of the Treasury. It was established in 1995 with the amalgamation of the Australian Trade Practices Commission and the Prices Surveillance Authority to administer the Trade Practices Act 1974,which was renamed the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 on 1 January 2011. The ACCC's mandate is to protect consumer rights and business rights and obligations,to perform industry regulation and price monitoring,and to prevent illegal anti-competitive behaviour.
False advertising is the act of publishing,transmitting,or otherwise publicly circulating an advertisement containing a false claim,or statement,made intentionally to promote the sale of property,goods,or services. A false advertisement can be classified as deceptive if the advertiser deliberately misleads the consumer,rather than making an unintentional mistake. A number of governments use regulations to limit false advertising.
Bid rigging is a fraudulent scheme in a procurement action which enables companies to submit non-competitive bids. It can be performed by corrupt officials,by firms in an orchestrated act of collusion,or by officials and firms acting together. This form of collusion is illegal in most countries. It is a form of price fixing and market allocation,often practiced where contracts are determined by a call for bids,for example in the case of government construction contracts. The typical objective of bid rigging is to enable the "winning" party to obtain contracts at uncompetitive prices. The other parties are compensated in various ways,for example,by cash payments,or by being designated to be the "winning" bidder on other contracts,or by an arrangement where some parts of the successful bidder's contract will be subcontracted to them. In this way,they "share the spoils" among themselves. Bid rigging almost always results in economic harm to the agency which is seeking the bids,and to the public,who ultimately bear the costs as taxpayers or consumers.
In 2005 it was revealed that the implementation of copy protection measures on about 22 million CDs distributed by Sony BMG installed one of two pieces of software that provided a form of digital rights management (DRM) by modifying the operating system to interfere with CD copying. Neither program could easily be uninstalled,and they created vulnerabilities that were exploited by unrelated malware. One of the programs would install and "phone home" with reports on the user's private listening habits,even if the user refused its end-user license agreement (EULA),while the other was not mentioned in the EULA at all. Both programs contained code from several pieces of copylefted free software in an apparent infringement of copyright,and configured the operating system to hide the software's existence,leading to both programs being classified as rootkits.
Hanil Cement Co,Ltd. is a cement,concrete and chemical company headquartered in Seoul,Korea,established in 1961. It produces portland cement products and cement under the brand Remital.
PassAlong Networks,also known as Tennessee Pacific Group,LLC,was a developer of digital media innovations and services located in Franklin,Tennessee. The company had a digital music library of three million licensed songs,two million of which were raw MP3 music files,and provided a series of products and services in the digital media marketplace.
Jonathan David Leibowitz is an American attorney who served under President Barack Obama as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 2009 to 2013. Leibowitz was appointed to the commission in 2004,and resigned in 2013. During Leibowitz's tenure,the FTC brought privacy cases against Google,Facebook and others for violating consumer privacy,as well as enforcement against "pay-for-delay" deals in which pharmaceutical companies paid competitors to stay out of the market. Prior to joining the FTC,Leibowitz was Vice President for Congressional Affairs from 2000 to 2004 of the MPAA.
This is a partial list of notable price fixing and bid rigging cases.
Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM),such as access control technologies,can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM technologies govern the use,modification and distribution of copyrighted works and of systems that enforce these policies within devices. DRM technologies include licensing agreements and encryption.
Julie Simone Brill is an American lawyer who serves as Chief Privacy Officer and Corporate Vice President for Global Privacy,Safety and Regulatory Affairs at Microsoft. Prior to her role at Microsoft,Brill was nominated by President Barack Obama on November 16,2009,and confirmed unanimously by the US Senate to serve as Commissioner of the US Federal Trade Commission on March 3,2010. Brill served as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 2010 to 2016.
A slave contract refers to an unfair,long-term contract between Korean entertainers and their management agencies.
Kakao M was a South Korean entertainment company established by Min Yeong-bin in 1978. It was one of the largest co-publisher companies in South Korea. The company operated as a record label,talent agency,music production company,event management,concert production company,and music publishing house.
Stone Music Entertainment,is a South Korean music distribution company under CJ ENM,as part of a partnership with the music streaming store Genie Music since 2021. It was one of the largest co-publisher companies in South Korea.
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.
KMP Holdings was a South Korean music distribution company. It was headquartered in Gangnam-gu,Seoul and was opened on March 18,2010.
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.
