...| ANTITRUST LAW | | Name -Manpreet Kaur [Date] | “The mission of the Antitrust Division is to promote economic competition through enforcing and providing guidance on antitrust laws and principles”. Antitrust laws have been developed to create the strong foundation of a free & open market of a vibrant economy. Market is so competitive now a days, there are so many options available for products & services, which is the result of antitrust laws. Antitrust is developed to help both consumers & business owners. “These laws promote vigorous competition and protect consumers from anticompetitive mergers and business practices” Antitrust laws are developed by the U.S. Government, also commonly known as "competition laws". Antitrust law was put in place by U.S. Government to protect consumers from being vulnerable to exploitery business practices. Government protects consumers by ensuring that the competition which exists in the market is fair, & would also ensure that enforcement leads to an open-market which is consumer friendly. ANTITRUST LAW-GOAL & HISTORY The goal set by government is to protect the end user, consumer, antitrust laws “is to protect economic freedom and opportunity by promoting free and fair competition in the marketplace”. Consider being in a market with one option, what it would offer to consumers, technically nothing, because there are no options. Antitrust law ensure that the “Competition in a free market benefits American...
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...Running Head: PROTECTION FOR THE CONSUMER IN ANTITRUST LAWS Student Date Abstract There are instances where major manufacturers are protected by antitrust laws. Even though it may appear they are siding with a monopolistic power in the marketplace. On the other hand federal regulation commissions are hard at work in protecting the consumer from unfair treatment. The judgment under which such decisions are made require careful consideration of the intent of the companies involved and how they affect the consumer. Why would the drug maker want to stymie generic competition? Explain. One of the main reasons that a major pharmaceutical company would attempt to stymie generic competition is of course loss of revenues. The generic brand often times provides the same level of benefits but at a much lower costs, therefore the drug maker would lose million of dollar potentially by allowing the generic product equal opportunity. Another reason is that the cost of developing a drug, in addition to advertising and marketing the product oftentimes requires thousands of dollars be invested. In order to recoup the cost of research and design, manufacturing, compliance to federal regulations and the like, it is necessary for the product to be successful. Any competition will hinder potential success of the product. Consider the fact that companies must be successful to continue to have investors willing to resource projects, studies, and funding for research and development...
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...Patricia Harris Busn 310-1103B Business Ethics Abstract There are instances where major manufacturers are protected by antitrust laws. Even though it may appear they are siding with a monopolistic power in the marketplace. On the other hand federal regulation commissions are hard at work in protecting the consumer from unfair treatment. The judgments under which such decisions are made require careful consideration of the intent of the companies involved and how they affect the consumer. Why would the drug maker want to stymie generic competition? Explain. One of the main reasons that a major pharmaceutical company would attempt to stymie generic competition is of course loss of revenues. The generic brand often times provides the same level of benefits but at a much lower costs, therefore the drug maker would lose million of dollars potentially by allowing the generic product equal opportunity. Another reason is that the cost of developing a drug, in addition to advertising and marketing the product oftentimes requires thousands of dollars be invested. In order to recoup the cost of research and design, manufacturing, compliance to federal regulations and the like, it is necessary for the product to be successful. Any competition will hinder potential success of the product. Consider the fact that companies must be successful to continue to have investors willing to resource projects, studies, and funding for research and development. If the company does not...
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...case against Microsoft that began nearly twenty-two years ago. To begin we will look at the history leading up to the filing, the government's argument, Microsoft's argument, and the outcome of the case. We will also look at the intent of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Specifically, how does the Sherman Anti-Trust Act protect consumers? Finally, we will discuss whether the anti-trust legislation actually accomplishes what it is intended to do, with respect to the technology industry. Microsoft has been under constant scrutiny since June 1990 when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched a probe into the possible collusion between Microsoft and IBM. Three years later, the FTC handed over their investigation to the U.S. Department of Justice. After years of accusations for monopolizing and engaging in anti-competitive acts, Microsoft finally, on May 18, 1998, received a suit for violation of federal anti-trust laws.[i] The suit alleges that Microsoft is in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and seeks to prohibit Microsoft from selling certain products and engaging in certain sales practices. Time Line of Events [pic][ii] The government's complaint contains four counts: 1. Microsoft illegally monopolized the market for operating systems (“OSs”) for personal computers (“PCs”) under paragraph 2 of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.[iii] 2. Microsoft had anti-competitive contractual arrangements with various vendors...
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...Article/Case Law Search Tina Thomas HCS/430 - Legal Issues in Health Care: Regulation and Compliance February 28, 2011 William Bross Article/Case Law Search The main function of the anti trust law in health care is to help keep the industry competitive and open so that any means of delivery service that are new or any new financing of health care services are able to compete for the acceptance by any purchasers. By developing these arrangements helps the competition such as providers, insurers, and any others and this is important to help prevent the fixing of prices, and any other agreements that may be allocated among the competitors. By enforcing the anti trust laws federally has helped to facilitate the delivery of health care systems that is efficient and has helped to challenge any efforts of any anticompetitive providers in health care delivery. Anti trust laws are a body of laws that help to prohibit any anti competitive behavior and any business practices that are unfair. These laws are made to help encourage competition in the workplace. These anti trust laws make many practices illegal and they may hurt consumers and businesses and can violate ethical behavior standards. In order to prevent failure within the market there are regulators along with candidates that are private which helps to apply the anti trust laws. These anti trust laws are supposed to help produce prices that are low and also make services and good better. These laws continue to be a...
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...that can effectively provide it. When this occurs, competing businesses and giant government entities will stop at nothing to shut it down. The Sherman Antitrust Act, the Clayton Act, and the Federal Trade Commission Act make up the current US antitrust laws. The antitrust laws are supposed to promote and protect competition. The philosophy behind the laws is that trusts and monopolies will stagnate markets and prevent others from engaging in healthy market competition. A monopoly is defined as a situation in which a single company owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service. (Investorwords, 2010) Antitrust law legislation started with the Sherman Act that was passed in 1890. The intent of the law was put in place to challenge the unchecked growth of corporations. By 1888, large corporations gained enough market muscle to dominate entire industries. The Sherman Act outlaws all contracts, combinations, and conspiracies that unreasonably restrain interstate trade. This includes agreements among competitors to fix prices, rig bids and allocate consumers. The Act also makes it a crime to monopolize any part of interstate commerce. Criminal prosecution will be filed if the Sherman act is violated. If found guilty, the violator can be fined up to $1 million and sentenced up to 10 years in federal...
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...Practices Abstract The United States has many laws to further fair, balanced and competitive businesses. I believe these laws are useful and are put into place to protect businesses, organizations and consumers. These laws help protect against copyrighting, discrimination, insider trading and trademarking. Businesses must engage in ethical business practices which include abiding by government laws in order to be more successful and profitable. Bovee & Thill (2012) says that there is a great amount of concern regarding the ethics of business leaders, both current and future and the public seems to agree. The changing nature of business from manufacturing to knowledge technology has called for new levels of regulation on the part of federal agencies. Fair Balanced and Competitive Business Practices Business enterprises play an important role in the society. However, these enterprises could exploit other players in the market or affect consumers’ welfare in one way or another. In a bid to promote fair and competitive business practices, the United States formulated and implemented antitrust laws. Among them are the Sherman Act of 1890, Federal Trade Commission Act, and 1914’s Clayton Act (Broder, 2012). Over the years, these laws have proved adequate, suitable, and relevant in the business world. The primary objective of the aforementioned laws is to promote fairness and competition among businesses. In other words, these laws make it harder for business players to create...
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...Antitrust law is the law of competition, and it is perhaps the least understood law of all. This article provides an overview and explanation of the essential principals of antitrust law, along with comments on certain recurring themes and recent developments in the voluminous case law by which the courts have struggled to give meaning and practical effect to the principal antitrust statutes. What Is Antitrust Law? Broadly speaking, antitrust laws seek to promote fair competition on the merits and to protect consumers and wronged competitor businesses from anti-competitive business practices — practices undertaken in effort to undermine competitive commercial behavior in a given market or line of commerce. The antitrust laws therefore forbid the wrongful acquisition or preservation of monopoly power, the abuse of monopoly power in order to establish a new monopoly, and concerted restraints of trade (i.e., business practices undertaken by two or more firms that improperly stifle or suppress “competition on the merits” in a given market). They also govern proposed mergers and acquisitions that are sufficiently large to constitute a threat to competition, and they address commercial practices that pose an arguable danger to competition on the merits in a properly defined antitrust market. The Principal Antitrust Offenses. Antitrust law is the law of competition. It is concerned with wrongs committed against competition on the merits in a given line of commerce or market. It is...
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...Abstract The present paper is an analysis of the Antitrust law in Italy, and its relation with the conflict of interest. In this paper I have given a general introduction to the development of the Antitrust Law in the United States, and consequently in Europe and finally in Italy, and how it regulates the conflict of interest. It is mainly divided in three parts. The first part is an introduction, I have given a definition of what is a Trust, according to the Common Law, then I have explained how the corporate trusts were formed in America, and how and why the Antitrust Legislation was born, and how it has evolved. Therefore, I have discussed about the influence of the American Antitrust Law on the on the European Legislation covering this matter. In the second part, I have discussed about the Italian Antitrust Law, the monopoly of state and task of the Italian Competion Authority. In the third part, I have explained what is a conflict of interest and how the Italian Antitrust Law try to regulate it ( Frattini Law). At the conclusion I have mentioned some cases of conflict of interest in Italy, such as the one of the former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and how the former has not yet been solved. Keywords Trust, Antitrust Law Competition Authority Conflict of interest Frattini law Introduction Overview on the Antitrust Law in America and Europe The trust，definition Originally, a trust, in the Common law, is a relationship whereby property is held by one party for...
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...The four Internet giants: Competition and antitrust regulation Maastricht University | | | | School of Business & Economics | | | | Place & date: | 18-01-13, Maastricht | | | | Name, initials: | Hiddema, M. | | For assessor only | | ID number: | I6019815 | | 1. Content | | Study: | Fiscal Economics | | 2. Language structure | | Course code: | EBC1011 | | 3. Language accuracy | | Group number: | 5 | | 4. Language: Format & citing/referencing | | Writing tutor name: | Martin Millband | | Overall: | Fail | Writing assignment: | Micro-participation Course Assignment | | Advisory grade | | | | | Assessor’s initials | BW | Your UM email address: m.hiddema@maastrichtuniversity.nl Table of contents 1. Introduction 3 2. The competitive model in the Internet market 4 3. Google 5 4. Facebook 7 5. Amazon 8 6. Apple 9 7. Conclusion 10 References 12 The four Internet giants: competition and antitrust regulations 1. Introduction The Economist (2012) reported that rivalry between the four Internet giants, which included Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple, is increasing. All four giants have well-developed, powerful business models. Google has tied its search engine to the advertisement business while Facebook is connecting advertisements to the interests of people revealed on their Facebook page. Amazon started selling books at premium...
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...The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) enforces the federal antitrust laws, and is responsible for reviewing mergers through a process before mergers are finalized. There are no specific policies for the airline business. Externalities that exist for the industry are rising fuel prices, terrorist attacks, emissions, noise pollution, congestion, and traffic delays just, to name a few. The Antitrust Division’s role maintains the competitive market by blocking anticompetitive mergers. The DOJ approach to reviewing mergers is given in detail in the Horizontal Merger Guidelines. Lawyers and economists are the individuals that analyze the market. The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, section 7, does not allow the approval of mergers, and acquisitions that will cause the U.S. market to decrease in competition. The responsibility of DOJ is to determine if the merger will enhance or create market power. According to J. Bruce McDonald, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division (2005), “Market power is the ability to raise profitability prices over the long-term, without losing sales such that the price increases become unprofitable. Protecting consumers maintaining competitive markets is the goal of antitrust enforcement.” According to DOJ (2005), “the last merger investigated was in 2000-2001, United's proposed acquisition of US Airways. The merger presented competitive problems that can arise in airline mergers: * United had a large base of operations...
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...collects the most money. In business, this is illegal and antitrust laws are what mandates and controls corporate America’s ability to create monopolies. This attempts to keep a fair playing field among competitors in similar businesses (Ftc Guide To Antitrust Laws, 2008). With the current health care debate issues concerning anti trust laws are also an issue for concern. A major facet of President Obama’s health care reform is for those within the health care community from providers to drug companies to commit on some level to keeping down cost. According to the New York Times, “Any agreement among competitors with regard to prices or price increases — even if they set a maximum — would raise legal concerns” (Pear, 2006) Anti-trust laws are imperative to keep the market competitive regardless of the type of business one runs. However, especially in terms of medical care it is important that issues, such as price gouging do not take place because of the large number of people who struggle with health care cost. Unfair business practices are always a point within business constantly under monitoring and creating changes because of said monitoring. Health care is essential to the everyday lives of the American people, from those who can afford to pay cash for their medical services to those who use public assistance, and everyone in between. If any area of business needs to stay abreast of issues concerning anti trust laws and monopoly health care is number one because of the domino...
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...Executive Summary Over the years, Antitrust law has been instrumental in influencing healthcare. Whether we want to believe or not, antitrust law facilitated escorting medicine in as an establishment to take care of our communities and patients. Over the years, hospitals have been the brunt of antitrust litigation. Between 1985 and 1999 hospitals were defendants in 61 percent of 394 medical antitrust disputes that led courts to issue formal opinions (Hammer, Peter, J. and Sage, William, M., 2003). However, these numbers do not support the under published cases, which do not result in a judicial decision. When hospitals are healthcare conglomerates to provide services antitrust views them as just a business. The services provided by hospitals are complex from the services they provide to the technology they use to the human capital necessary to run the operations of the hospital. Unfortunately, antitrust law concentrates on the overall hospitals behavior and not its purpose. Therefore, not-for-profit designation and lifesaving intentions of the hospital consider immaterial to any type of analysis performed by antitrust. Hospitals reserve the right to enter into any joint venture agreement provided each entity is able to achieve its objects autonomous of one another and avoid becoming a dominate player in the market (Hammer and Sage, 2003). For the most part, it will be the market that dictates if the hospital meets the demands and services demanded by the community. The challenge...
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...THE UNFAIR COMPETITION LAWS INTRODUCTION The purpose of this paper is to discuss the name and describe the different types of structural organizations used by multinational corporations. The different organizational structures are the parent company, the nonmultinational enterprise, the national multinational enterprise, and the international multinational enterprise. I will also discuss the home state regulation of multinational enterprises. The forms of regulations discussed in this paper will be the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Clayton Act and the Robinson-Patman Act. Also there effects on business in the 21st century. THE MULTINATIONAL ORGANIZATION The Parent Company To carry out operations internationally, large business have adapted their organizational structures to share risks and to take advantage of economies of scale. The simplest international operating structure is the “nonmultinational enterprise,” in which a firm organized in one country contracts with an independent foreign firm to carry out sales or purchasing abroad. Somewhat more complex is the “national multinational enterprise,” in which a parent firm established in one country establishes wholly owned branches and subsidiaries in other countries. The most complex is the “international multinational enterprise” made up of two or more parents from different countries that co-own operating businesses in two or more countries. (August, R. 2000, International Business Law) The Nonmultinational...
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...States has several laws that are intended to further fair, balanced, and competitive business practices and I think they are effective but there are some professional economist who don’t always agree on what role the government should play in the economy. I intend show examples of how the laws set in place are helping the competitive business practices. The examples I plan to focus on are major government agencies and what they do, antitrust legislation, and merger and acquisition approvals, and encourage innovation and economic development. These examples will back my belief that the laws set by the United States government are effective. It is stated in Bovee and Thill (2012, p.38) based on the belief that fair competition benefits the economy and society in general, governments intervene in markets to preserve competition and ensure that no single enterprise becomes too powerful. Major Government Agencies To keep the business practices fair, balanced, and competitive the United States government has agencies to promote standards, regulate and oversee industries and enforce laws and regulations. These agencies are Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) which regulates and protects public from unreasonable risk of injury from consumer products, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which develops standards to protect the environment, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which protects and resolves discriminatory employment practices, Federal Aviation Administration...
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