The Robinson–Patman Act (RPA) of 1936 is a United States federal law that prohibits anticompetitive practices by producers, specifically price discrimination.
Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services. In general, it is the sale of goods in bulk to anyone, either a person or an organization, other than the end consumer of that merchandise. Wholesaling is buying goods in bulk quantity, usually directly from the manufacturer or source, at a discounted rate. The retailer then sells the goods to the end consumer at a higher price making a profit.
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.
A grey market or dark market is the trade of a commodity through distribution channels that are not authorized by the original manufacturer or trade mark proprietor. Grey market products are products traded outside the authorized manufacturer's channel.
The list price, also known as the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP), or the recommended retail price (RRP), or the suggested retail price (SRP) of a product is the price at which its manufacturer notionally recommends that a retailer sell the product.
Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market. Antitrust laws ensure businesses do not engage in competitive practices that harm other, usually smaller, businesses or consumers. These laws are formed to promote healthy competition within a free market by limiting the abuse of monopoly power. Competition allows companies to compete in order for products and services to improve; promote innovation; and provide more choices for consumers. In order to obtain greater profits, some large enterprises take advantage of market power to hinder survival of new entrants. Anti-competitive behavior can undermine the efficiency and fairness of the market, leaving consumers with little choice to obtain a reasonable quality of service.
Bauer & Cie. v. O'Donnell, 229 U.S. 1 (1913), was a 1913 United States Supreme Court decision involving whether a purchaser of a patented product bearing a price-fixing notice incurs guilt of patent infringement by reselling the product at a price lower than that which the notice commands. A divided Court (5–4) held that it was not.
The Net Book Agreement (NBA) was a fixed book price agreement in the United Kingdom and Ireland between The Publishers Association and booksellers which set the prices at which books were to be sold to the public. The agreement was concerned solely with price maintenance. It operated in the UK from 1900 until the 1990s when it was abandoned by some large bookshop chains and was then ruled illegal. It also operated in Ireland until shortly before its final demise.
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.
A price floor is a government- or group-imposed price control or limit on how low a price can be charged for a product, good, commodity, or service. It is one type of price support; other types include supply regulation and guarantee government purchase price. A price floor must be higher than the equilibrium price in order to be effective. The equilibrium price, commonly called the "market price", is the price where economic forces such as supply and demand are balanced and in the absence of external influences the (equilibrium) values of economic variables will not change, often described as the point at which quantity demanded and quantity supplied are equal. Governments use price floors to keep certain prices from going too low.
Resale price maintenance (RPM) or, occasionally, retail price maintenance is the practice whereby a manufacturer and its distributors agree that the distributors will sell the manufacturer's product at certain prices, at or above a price floor or at or below a price ceiling. If a reseller refuses to maintain prices, either openly or covertly, the manufacturer may stop doing business with it. Resale price maintenance is illegal in many jurisdictions.
Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co Ltd v Selfridge & Co Ltd[1915] UKHL 1, [1915] AC 847 is an English contract law case, with relevance for UK competition law, decided in the House of Lords. It established that an agreement for resale price maintenance was unenforceable as a matter of privity of contract.
Ticket resale is the act of reselling tickets for admission to events. Tickets are bought from licensed sellers and then sold for a price determined by the individual or company in possession of the tickets. Tickets sold through secondary sources may be sold for less or more than their face value depending on demand, which tends to vary as the event date approaches. When the supply of tickets for a given event available through authorized ticket sellers is depleted, the event is considered "sold out", generally increasing the market value for any tickets on offer through secondary sellers. Ticket resale is common in both sporting and musical events.
The Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA) is an Act of the Parliament of Australia. Prior to 1 January 2011, it was known as the Trade Practices Act 1974 (TPA). The Act is the legislative vehicle for competition law in Australia, and seeks to promote competition, fair trading as well as providing protection for consumers. It is administered by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) and also gives some rights for private action. Schedule 2 of the CCA sets out the Australian Consumer Law (ACL). The Federal Court of Australia has the jurisdiction to determine private and public complaints made in regard to contraventions of the Act.
Albrecht v. Herald Co., 390 U.S. 145 (1968), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which reaffirmed the law that fixing a maximum price was illegal per se. This rule was reversed in 1997 by State Oil Co. v. Khan, which held that maximum price-setting was not inherently anti-competitive and not always a violation of antitrust law, and should therefore be evaluated for legality under the rule of reason rather than a per se rule.
Fixed book price (FBP) is a form of resale price maintenance applied to books. It allows publishers to determine the price of a book at which it is to be sold to the public. FBP can take the form of a law, mandatory to oblige by all retailers, or an agreement between publishers and booksellers. An example of a fixed book price law is French Lang Law and the German Buchpreisbindung. An example of a trade agreement is the former Net Book Agreement in the United Kingdom.
California Retail Liquor Dealers Assn. v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc., 445 U.S. 97 (1980), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court created a two-part test for the application of the state action immunity doctrine that it had previously developed in Parker v. Brown.
United States v. Colgate & Co., 250 U.S. 300 (1919), is a United States antitrust law case in which the United States Supreme Court noted that a company has the power to decide with whom to do business. Per the Colgate Doctrine, a company may unilaterally terminate business with any other company without triggering a violation of the antitrust laws.
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.
Reference for a Preliminary Ruling in the Criminal Proceedings against Bernard Keck and Daniel Mithouard (1993) C-267/91 is an EU law case, concerning the conflict of law between a national legal system and European Union law. The Court found that "selling arrangements" did not constitute a measure having equivalent effect to a quantitative restriction on trade between Member States of the European Community, as it was then. As a result, the 'discrimination test' was introduced to identify such selling arrangements.
