Antitrust Law Violation Of Antitrust Laws

Monopolies and oligopolies often use anti-competitive practices, which can have a negative impact on the economy. This is why company mergers are often examined closely by government regulators to avoid reducing competition in an industry.

There are many models of market structure in the field of economics. They include perfect competition on one end, monopoly on the other end, and competitive monopoly and oligopoly somewhere in the middle. In this paper, we will focus on the oligopoly structure because it is one of the strongest influences in the United States market. Although oligopolies can also be global, we will focus strictly on the United States here. We will define oligopoly, give key characteristics important to the oligopoly structure, explain why oligopolies form, then give an example of an oligopoly in today’s economy. Finally, we will discuss the benefits and costs in this type of market structure.

The Justice Department and the states contend that Microsoft is violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, which was passed by Congress in 1890. The act has two sections. Section I prohibits certain types of agreements that restrict the flow of trade. Section II prohibits the misuse of monopoly power, namely anti-competitive actions that seek to maintain that monopoly power and actions that attempt to use that monopoly power to dominate another market (2).

After a five-year investigation costing millions of dollars, the Antitrust Division found little that could be characterized as anti-competitive. But that did not stop the government. Not only did DOJ file an antitrust suit that caused Microsoft to cancel its planned

2. What are some of the anti-competitive behaviours SesamWare might be guilty of? How did/might SesamWare’s behavior adversely affect free market competition upon which international trade depends? ( 5 Marks)

What is the goal of antitrust liability? Antitrust laws are designed to protect competition in markets. Early in the nation’s history, there was widespread fear of the dangers of monopolies and other restrictions on competition. In 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in order to prevent limits on competition caused by private parties. Thus the main goal of antitrust law is to preserve “economic freedom” and a “free-enterprise system.” Specifically, it attempts to preserve “the freedom to compete” for businesses. In a practical sense, antitrust laws are seeking to prevent burdens on competition in the marketplace.

Oligopolies have been around ever since there is trade. However, it has only recently gained grounds in this age of globalisation. Never before has oligopolistic competition been so fiercely contested across so many industries.

The first antitrust law passed by Congress was the Sherman Act, in 1890. In 1914, Congress passed two other antitrust laws: The Federal Trade Commission Act, which created the Federal Trade Commission, and the Clayton Act. With some revisions, these are the most important federal antitrust laws still in effect today. Section 7 of the Clayton Act prohibits mergers and acquisitions when the effect "may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly." (ftc.gov) The antitrust laws proscribe unlawful mergers and business practices in general terms, leaving courts to decide which ones are illegal based on the facts of each case. For over 100 years, the antitrust laws have had the same basic objective: to protect the process of competition for the benefit of consumers, making sure there are strong incentives for businesses to operate efficiently, keep prices down, and keep quality up. The enforcement authorities of the federal antitrust laws are The Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division (ftc.gov).

The U.S. government charged that Microsoft had violated antitrust law. Microsoft disagreed. Do you agree with the U.S. government, or with Microsoft? In answering this question, you may wish to address two issues. Was Microsoft a monopoly? Did it use its monopoly to compete unfairly against other companies?

dominant incumbent even if the incumbent priced its products substantially above competitive levels for a significant period of time” (“Microsoft: Court’s Findings…). Obviously, the rival companies such as, IBM and Apple, have found great fact, that

An argument for people in favor of monopolies would be the case of Google. Google has a monopoly on the online search business. However, even with this monopoly they still innovate and continue to satisfy the needs of the

Google is arguably the most popular search engine used on the internet. The company offers superior search results and clearly employs workers with innovative ideas that can keep the company ahead of the competition. However Google’s own mission statement requires that it “Do no evil,” meaning that it has made readily available the tools that have made the company successful. The Justice Department would like to categorize Google as a monopoly, but due to its open book reporting and its development of additional services, proving monopolistic status would be difficult and perhaps ineffective.

The Sherman Antitrust Act is a competition law passed by Congress in 1890. It prohibits certain business activities that reduce competition in the marketplace, and requires the United States federal government to investigate and pursue trusts, companies, and organizations suspected of being in violation. It was the first Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies, and today still forms the basis for most antitrust litigation by the United States federal government. Section 1 states contract, combination or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states, or foreign nations is hereby declared illegal. Intel did not break Section 1 of the Sherman Act because the company did not prohibit competing companies from making agreements to fix prices, to divide up territories or customers, or to restrict the quantity of goods they bring to the market. Section 2 of the Sherman Act states every person who shall monopolize or attempt to monopolize or combine or conspire with any other person or persons to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony. Intel did violate Section2 of the Sherman Act, Intel employed payments for exclusivity, rebates, and other support conditional on the recipient restricting its business with AMD, as well as threats of

Antitrust law in the United States is a collection of federal and state government laws regulating the conduct and organization of business corporations with the intent to promote fair competition in an open-market economy for the benefit of the public. Congress passed the first antitrust statute, the Sherman Antitrust Act, in 1890 in response to the public outrage toward big business. In 1914, Congress passed two additional antitrust laws: the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Act. (The Antitrust Laws. Web.)

Professionally, Google is known as a company based in California that is labeled as an internet company which is multi-national. It provides online searching, as well as cloud computing, software, and advertising. The company actually didn 't start off as a company, but rather as a research project back in 1996. The project was being conducted by Sergey Brin and Larry Page who at the time were studying at Standford University as PhD students. At the time, in internet-land, the search engines that existed operated where they ranked the results by counting the number of times keywords results were on a page. The two students came with a better idea (called PageRank at the time), that looked at relationship between websites. It would rank websites by determining it 's relevance, which was based on the importance of pages, and the number of pages, and how it linked back to the main website. After the idea 's creation, the two founders made the project into a business, and changed the name to "Google", which is a neat miss-spelling of the word "googol" which had significance because it stands for the number one followed by one hundred zeros, and it related to their goal because they wanted to create a search engine that offered a large quantity of information.