The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 is a United States antitrust law which prescribes the rule of free competition among those engaged in commerce. It was passed by Congress and is named for Senator John Sherman, its principal author.
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.
SEC Rule 10b-5, codified at 17 CFR 240.10b-5, is one of the most important rules targeting securities fraud promulgated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, pursuant to its authority granted under § 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The rule prohibits any act or omission resulting in fraud or deceit in connection with the purchase or sale of any security. The issue of insider trading is given further definition in SEC Rule 10b5-1.
The exhaustion doctrine, also referred to as the first sale doctrine, is a U.S. common law patent doctrine that limits the extent to which patent holders can control an individual article of a patented product after a so-called authorized sale. Under the doctrine, once an authorized sale of a patented article occurs, the patent holder's exclusive rights to control the use and sale of that article are said to be "exhausted," and the purchaser is free to use or resell that article without further restraint from patent law. However, under the repair and reconstruction doctrine, the patent owner retains the right to exclude purchasers of the articles from making the patented invention anew, unless it is specifically authorized by the patentee to do so.
International Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U.S. 392 (1947), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that the Sherman Act prohibits as per se violations all tying arrangements in which a product for which a seller has a legal monopoly, such as a patent, requires purchasers to buy as well a product for which the seller has no legal monopoly.
Restraints of trade is a common law doctrine relating to the enforceability of contractual restrictions on freedom to conduct business. It is a precursor of modern competition law. In an old leading case of Mitchel v Reynolds (1711) Lord Smith LC said,
it is the privilege of a trader in a free country, in all matters not contrary to law, to regulate his own mode of carrying it on according to his own discretion and choice. If the law has regulated or restrained his mode of doing this, the law must be obeyed. But no power short of the general law ought to restrain his free discretion.
In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943, 88 U.S.P.Q.2d 1385, was an en banc decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on the patenting of method claims, particularly business methods. The court affirmed the rejection of the patent claims involving a method of hedging risks in commodities trading, as non-patentable subject matter. Most importantly, the Court concluded, that machine-or-transformation test "was proper test to apply to determine patent-eligibility of process", and that the “useful, concrete and tangible result” of State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group and AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc. should no longer be relied upon.
Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., 553 U.S. 617 (2008), is a case decided by the United States Supreme Court in which the Court reaffirmed the validity of the patent exhaustion doctrine. The decision made uncertain the continuing precedential value of a line of decisions in the Federal Circuit that had sought to limit Supreme Court exhaustion doctrine decisions to their facts and to require a so-called "rule of reason" analysis of all post-sale restrictions other than tie-ins and price fixes. In the course of restating the patent exhaustion doctrine, the Court held that it is triggered by, among other things, an authorized sale of a component when the only reasonable and intended use of the component is to engage the patent and the component substantially embodies the patented invention by embodying its essential features. The Court also overturned, in passing, that the exhaustion doctrine was limited to product claims and did not apply to method claims.
Basic Inc. v. Levinson, 485 U.S. 224 (1988), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States articulated the "fraud-on-the-market theory" as giving rise to a rebuttable presumption of reliance in securities fraud cases.
The Parker immunity doctrine is an exemption from liability for engaging in antitrust violations. It applies to the state when it exercises legislative authority in creating a regulation with anticompetitive effects, and to private actors when they act at the direction of the state after it has done so. The doctrine is named for the Supreme Court of the United States case in which it was initially developed, Parker v. Brown.
Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Servs., Inc., 504 U.S. 451 (1992), is a 1992 Supreme Court decision in which the Court held that even though an equipment manufacturer lacked significant market power in the primary market for its equipment—copier-duplicators and other imaging equipment—nonetheless, it could have sufficient market power in the secondary aftermarket for repair parts to be liable under the antitrust laws for its exclusionary conduct in the aftermarket. The reason was that it was possible that, once customers were committed to the particular brand by having purchased a unit, they were "locked in" and no longer had any realistic alternative to turn to for repair parts.
Woollard v. Sheridan, 863 F. Supp. 2d 462, reversed sub. nom., Woollard v Gallagher, 712 F.3d 865, was a civil lawsuit brought on behalf of Raymond Woollard, a resident of the State of Maryland, by the Second Amendment Foundation against Terrence Sheridan, Secretary of the Maryland State Police, and members of the Maryland Handgun Permit Review Board. Plaintiffs allege that the Defendants' refusal to grant a concealed carry permit renewal to Mr. Woollard on the basis that he "...ha[d] not demonstrated a good and substantial reason to wear, carry or transport a handgun as a reasonable precaution against apprehended danger in the State of Maryland" was a violation of Mr. Woollard's rights under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, and therefore unconstitutional. The trial court found in favor of Mr. Woollard, However, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the trial court and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review that decision.
Hoffman Estates v. The Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489 (1982), is a United States Supreme Court decision concerning the vagueness and overbreadth doctrines as they apply to restrictions on commercial speech. The justices unanimously upheld an ordinance passed by a Chicago suburb that imposed licensing requirements on the sale of drug paraphernalia by a local record store. Their decision overturned the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Morton Salt Co. v. G.S. Suppiger Co., 314 U.S. 488 (1942), is a patent misuse decision of the United States Supreme Court. It was the first case in which the Court expressly labeled as "misuse" the Motion Picture Patent/Carbice tie-in defense to a charge of patent infringement and created the present blanket remedy in infringement cases of unenforceability of the misused patent. The decision re-emphasized that misuse can be found without finding an antitrust violation.
Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U.S. 446 (2015), is a significant decision of the United States Supreme Court for several reasons. One is that the Court turned back a considerable amount of academic criticism of both the patent misuse doctrine as developed by the Supreme Court and the particular legal principle at issue in the case. Another is that the Court firmly rejected efforts to assimilate the patent misuse doctrine to antitrust law and explained in some detail the different policies at work in the two bodies of law. Finally, the majority and dissenting opinions informatively articulate two opposing views of the proper role of the doctrine of stare decisis in US law.
Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 337 U.S. 293 (1949), more commonly referred to as the Standard Stations case to distinguish it from a 1911 case with the same caption, Standard Oil Co. v. United States, is a 1947 decision of the United States Supreme Court in which requirements contracts for gasoline stations were held to violate section 3 of the Clayton Act. That statute prohibits selling goods on the condition that the customer must not deal in the goods of a competitor of the seller, such as in a requirements contract, if the effect is to "substantially lessen competition" or "tend to create a monopoly." The doctrine of this case has been referred to as "quantitative substantiality," and its exact contours were unsettled and controversial for many years until the Supreme Court authoritatively explained it in United States v. Philadelphia National Bank.
United States v. Philadelphia National Bank, 374 U.S. 321 (1963), also called the Philadelphia Bank case, was a 1963 decision of the United States Supreme Court that held Section 7 of the Clayton Act, as amended in 1950, applied to bank mergers. It was the first case in which the Supreme Court considered the application of antitrust laws to the commercial banking industry. In addition to holding the statute applicable to bank mergers, the Court established a presumption that mergers that covered at least 30 percent of the relevant market were presumptively unlawful.
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.
Otter Tail Power Co. v. United States, 410 U.S. 366 (1973), is a United States Supreme Court decision often cited as the first case in which the Court held violative of the antitrust laws a single firm's refusal to deal with other firms that denied them access to a facility essential to engaging in business.
Gamco, Inc. v. Providence Fruit & Produce Building, Inc., 194 F.2d 484, is a 1952 First Circuit decision in the United States.
