Antitrust laws are laws that were enacted to guarantee American consumers the right to expect the benefits of free and open competition. Such laws are enforced by the United States Department of Justice's antitrust division (Anonymous, 2010). There are numerous Acts that constitute the Antitrust Laws. These include the Sherman Act, Clayton Act, and the Robinson-Patman. Sherman Act, the primary federal antitrust provision, seeks to promote and protect competition by outlawing any form of combination or conspiracy that restraint interstate commerce.
Antitrust legislations envisaged a situation where competitors would collude and engage in price fixing, bid rigging, market division, or allocation of schemes to the disadvantage of the consumers who may have to buy goods or access services at inflated prices. The customers could also end up getting cheated (Anonymous, 2010).
The Antitrust laws were legislated to deter dishonest businessmen from engaging in price fixing activities. Competitors can collude to raise, fix, or maintain the prices of their commodities at a given level. The competitors must not necessarily agree to charge the same price just like the in put of every competitor may be unnecessary. All that the competitors taking part in price fixing require to do is establish or adhere to price discounts, hold prices firm, eliminate or reduce discounts, come up with a formula for computing prices, maintain a given price differential, and adhere to a minimum price schedule. Worse still, some competitors also fix credit terms. They also never advertise their prices. Such dishonest businesses also undertake to establish policing mechanisms to compel other competitors to adhere to the agreement (Anonymous, 2010).
Legislation of antitrust laws was also informed by the tendency of some competitors to engage in bid rigging. Such competitors do conspire to raise prices in circumstances when federal, state, or local governments are the purchasers....
.. are not to be distinguished by any judgment regarding the wisdom or unwisdom, the rightness or wrongness, the selfishness or unselfishness of the end to which the particular union activities are the means.' The law, however, still bites on situations where trade unions and groups of employers conspire together to suppress or eliminate competition. In other words, businessmen are not entitled to take advantage of the relative immunity of labor
Antitrust and Intellectual Property Antitrust Law Remedies in Intellectual Property Cases In any research paper it is important to first define the terms used prominently in order to make sure that the reader understands what is being said. In this case, the two terms that require definition are antitrust and intellectual property. According to a definition from Cornell University Law School "Trusts and monopolies are concentrations of economic power in the hands
Summary and Conclusion As noted by Greaney (2009) competition is heavy on the legislative minds of the United States and it is believed as evidence by all proposals stating the same that competition is the factor that will drive the competition in the health care market and ultimately will be that which resolves many of the present consumers complaints and shortcomings of the health care programs presently in use in today's
Antitrust Law: The Microsoft Company Probe Antitrust law umbrellas all pieces of federal and state legislation that are aimed at regulating commerce and trade by preventing price fixing and unlawful restraints, and controlling monopolies so as to maximize consumer welfare by promoting competition, encouraging quality production and ensuring reasonable prices (Farlex, 2014). Monopolies and oligopolies are the two forms of market structures covered under antitrust law. Such could be natural monopolies,
In short, the petitioners accused Microsoft of monopolizing the market by way of unfair practices. In 2000, the court found Microsoft guilty of such violations of antitrust laws. As a consequence, Microsoft was broken into two businesses. What's more, other businesses filed grievances against Microsoft; the latter oftentimes settled out of court, paying restitution to the claimants. Shortly after the judgment to breakup Microsoft was made, it was partly
Antitrust Laws: Benefits, Importance, And Effectiveness Standard economic theory holds that sufficient competition is a vital ingredient for the effective functioning of markets, without which unscrupulous players would be better placed to not only obtain monopoly power, but also impede on allocative efficiency by setting prices in their favor (Updegrove, 2007). In order to prevent this and ensure the maintenance of sufficient competition, governments enact antitrust and competition laws and put
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