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Articles Posted in Per Se Antitrust Violation

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Resale Price Maintenance, Horizontal Conspiracies, and Antitrust Law

Author: Jarod Bona If you are looking for controversy, you came to the right place. Today, we discuss resale price maintenance, one of the most contentious issues in all of antitrust. If you look around and see a bunch of antitrust economists, hide your screen so they don’t start arguing with…

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Is an Anticompetitive Contract Clause an Ancillary Restraint that will survive Antitrust Scrutiny?

As a regular reader of The Antitrust Attorney Blog, you understand that coordinating prices or allocating markets with your competitor is a terrible idea. Doing so is likely to lead to civil litigation and perhaps even criminal penalties. Price fixing and market allocation agreements are per se antitrust violations. That…

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Classic Antitrust Cases: Leegin and Resale-Price Maintenance Agreements

Author: Jarod Bona Some antitrust questions are easy: Is naked price-fixing among competitors a Sherman Act violation? Yes, of course it is. Indeed, it is a per se antitrust violation. But there is one issue that is not only a common occurrence but also a source of great controversy among antitrust…

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Antitrust Law Meets Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies in Court: Lessons Learned on Market Definition and Antitrust Injury from the Bitman Case

  Author: Luis Blanquez Following DOJ’s remarks on blockchain, it was only a matter of time until antitrust law and the unstoppable blockchain world would meet in court. And it finally happened some months ago in the complex Bitmain case. In this case a cryptocurrency developer and mining company sued…

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Dividing Markets and Customers: Are Market Allocation Agreements Per Se Antitrust Violations?

Author: Jarod Bona Have you ever considered the idea that your business would be much more profitable if you didn’t have to compete so hard with that pesky competitor or group of competitors? Unless you have no competition—which is great for profits, read Peter Thiel’s book—this notion has probably crossed…

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A Federal Antitrust Investigation Can Cause an Antitrust Blizzard

Author: Jarod Bona I am from Minnesota, so I am quite familiar with blizzards. They may be interesting to watch through a window from a room warmed by a fireplace, but you don’t want to get caught in one. The same is true for an antitrust blizzard: They are interesting…

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Are Resale-Price-Maintenance Agreements Per Se Illegal Under California Antitrust Law?

Author: Jarod Bona In an earlier article, we discussed Leegin and the controversial issue of resale-price maintenance agreements under the federal antitrust laws. We’ve also written about these agreements here. And these issues often come up when discussing Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) Policies, which you can read about here. As…

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Is My Restrictive Covenant Legal Under California Law?

Author: Jarod Bona It depends. But probably not. Outside of California, courts may enforce these non-compete agreements arising out of an employment contract. Of course, most courts, no matter what the law and state, view them skeptically. In California, however, the policy against these agreements is particularly strong. A restrictive…

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Antitrust-Style Analysis in Patent Law

Author: Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Associate Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Engineering, Texas A&M University.  This guest post is based upon Professor Vishnubhakat’s innovative new paper applying antitrust concepts to patent law, which is now published in the Seton Hall Law Review: “The Antitrusting of Patentability” Courts facing difficult questions…

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Marketplace Bullying and Bona Law’s Antitrust Lawsuit in the Cement and Ready Mix Concrete Markets

Bona Law filed an antitrust lawsuit on behalf of our client in the Northern District of Georgia alleging antitrust violations in the cement and ready mix concrete markets. More on that later. But first I am going to tell you a fictional story about your nine-year-old son and his first…