Battle Over Minimum Pricing Heating Up

The Wall Street Journal is covering developments in the gathering battle between manufacturers and retailers / discounters, especially online ones, over minimum prices. Earlier this year the Supreme Court upheld the right of manufacturers to enforce price floors for their products. Since then, manufacturers have increasingly been employing service companies like NetEnforcers to snitch on discounters who offer goods below "minimum advertised prices" (or MAPs), and to send DMCA takedown notices to the likes of eBay and Craigslist for below-minimum offers. Separately, the Journal reports that a coalition of discounters and retailers is using eBay as a stalking-horse in a campaign to get consumers, and then politicians, fired up enough to pass legislation outlawing MAPs.

Comments

Shouldn't need a new law, but...

[Pokey.Clyde]

From TFA: eBay and discount retailer Costco Wholesale Corp., opponents decided to lobby for a bill now pending in Congress that would make minimum-pricing agreements a violation of antitrust law.

Shouldn't existing law prevent MAPs already? This sounds an awful lot like collusion and price-fixing to me. But since the Supreme Court has already said that manufacturers can enforce price floors, it sounds like new legislation is definitely needed.

Minimal Pricing = Legal Monopoly?

[Manip]

How can minimal pricing be legal or logical?

If I sell you an apple from my apple tree then what right should I have to say that you sell that apple at? Or what rights do I have to then your apple at all?

Obviously the original manufacturer has certain rights like copyright, trademark, but I fail to see how these right extend to something like price further down the supply chain.

This whole system just seems abusive and will make it harder for competition to ensue which last I checked was meant to be what a capitalist society was all about.

Re:Makes for an awkward situation

[Locklin]

Funny. The "nightmare" situation you describe resulting from a retailer ignoring MAP only becomes a problem because of MAP. 1,2,3 and 4 would not have happened if the regular retailers were "allowed" to lower their prices in response to the current (temporary) situation in the marketplace. Its plain and simple legal manipulation of the retail markets by manufacturers, and hurts everyone else.