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ABSTRACT With the growth of the administrative state, agency-promulgated enforcement policy statements, typically referred to as guidelines, have become ubiquitous in the U.S. federal system. Yet, the actual usage and [...]

I. INTRODUCTION "The labor of a human being is not a commodity or an article of commerce." (1) "The comparative advantage of workers in poor countries is cheap labor." (2) [...]

ABSTRACT The Patent Act of 1952 codified liability for active inducement of infringement and contributory infringement in 35 U.S.C. § 271. The patent law doctrines of active inducement of infringement [...]

INTRODUCTION In FTC v. Arch Coal, Inc., (1) Judge Bates described the proposed remedy (2) to an allegedly anticompetitive acquisition as the "elephant in the room." (3) When the Federal [...]

THE THEORY OF PREDATORY PRICING IS as old as the Sherman Act. Among the evils attributed to John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil was underpricing rivals to maintain a monopoly [...]

FOREWORD Welcome to the first publication of our third Working Group, this one devoted to the Role of Economics in Antitrust. The Sedona Conference® is a nonprofit law and policy [...]

I. INTRODUCTION Over the years, private enforcers have played a valuable role in preventing anti-competitive conduct, supplementing a governmental enforcement regime that cannot challenge all illegal behavior given its resource [...]

State attorneys general have merger enforcement authority under their state antitrust statutes and under the Clayton Act. (2) Working individually, with other attorneys general, or with federal antitrust authorities, an [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court decision on eminent domain, the legal seizure and transfer of property from one citizen to another, has caused an outcry from citizens who feel the state [...]

I. FEDERAL VS. STATE ANTITRUST LAW A. The History and Scope of State Antitrust Law Federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over federal antitrust causes of action. (1) Thus, a plaintiffs' [...]

The federal antitrust framework is formed - excepting The Sherman Act (1890) - of The Clayton Act (1914), The Federal Trade Commission Act (1914) and The Hard-Scott-Rodino Act (1976). These Antitrust Laws codify what have become known as „per se" and „rule of reason" violations of the Sherman Act. According to the Supreme Court's jurisprudence, a practice is an exclusionary conduct only if it is appreciated as an „unreasonable" restrain, but the Court hasn't explicitly defined this concept. However „reasonableness" inquiry focuses on how a challenge business practice affects competition. There exist two tests for demonstrate the anticompetitive characteristic of a practice: per se test and rule of reason test. Each test helps to identify a „per se" violation or a„,rule of reason" violation. The first test is applied to the violations of Section I of the Sherman Act and the second to the rest of them. Jurisprudence identifies as „per se" violations: price fixing, agreements among competitors to divide markets or allocate costumers, certain tying agreements and group boycotts. Under the application of „per se" test, a violation is treated as being so clearly anticompetitive as to be conclusively "unreasonable" and the plaintiff only has to demonstrate that the practice occurred. By contrast, „rule of reason" test was developed to analyze all the competitive and anticompetitive effects of the challenged conduct before the determination of „unreasonableness ". The "rule of reason" violations are prohibited under the Section II of the Sherman Act. The extensive background and experience in the U.S. Antitrust Law demonstrated that the classification of a practice as „per se" or „rule of reason" violation wasn't always easy to do. A few horizontal restrains were said to be subject to an intermediate mode of analysis called the „quick-look" which appeared in the XX century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]