On 2013-08-25 03:19, barts185 wrote:

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On 2013-08-25 02:30, Joe Roberts wrote:

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On 2013-08-25 01:10, barts185 wrote:

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On 2013-08-24 23:24, Joe Roberts wrote:
I'm referring to your whole post that suggests that producers requiring sellers to list items at a certain price is price fixing.

That's not what the term means.

"Vertical price fixing includes a manufacturer's attempt to control the price of its product at retail."

Am I misunderstanding that sentence?

Well, you're not misunderstanding it but you may have stopped reading too soon. As the next sentence says, this form of "price fixing" is not illegal, so you shouldn't really conflate it with actual price fixing.

http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/2010/08/price-......animals/

From the article you linked:

Thus, minimum RPM is not always legal or illegal, but each case will be analyzed on an individual basis, taking all relevant factors into consideration. It is worth noting that a significant amount of U.S. state law and legislation conforms to the new federal standard, but not all do.


From a more recent article:
http://www.wlf.org/upload/legalstudies/l......nder.pdf

Background.
Resale price maintenance is the practice by which a manufacturer of a product
establishes a fixed or minimum price for resale of the product which retailers or other distributors can
charge. For nearly 100 years, RPM agreements were held to be per se (or inherently) illegal under the
U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dr. Miles Medical Co. v. John D. Park & Sons Co., 220 U.S. 373
(1911). In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that long-standing precedent in Leegin Creative
Leather Prods. Inc. v. PSKS Inc., 551 U.S. 877 (2007) (“Leegin”), which held that RPM agreements are
subject to “rule of reason” analysis. Under that analysis, an RPM agreement is illegal only if it is found
to be unreasonable because its anti-competitive impacts outweigh its pro-competitive benefits.

Congressional Efforts to Repeal Leegin. In January 2009, Senator Herb Kohl introduced
Senate Bill 148, the “Discount Pricing Consumer Protection Act,” which sought to repeal Leegin and
codify per se illegality of RPM. The bill, re-introduced as Senate Bill 75 in January 2011, was reported
favorably by the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 3, 2011.

The bill still has many hoops to go through before it becomes law. However, legislation to
overturn Leegin has been supported in the past by at least 35 state attorneys general.1 In addition, the
bill likely will get additional support should the nominee for the next head of the Justice Department’s
Antitrust Division, William Baer, be approved. Mr. Baer, speaking at a Senate Judiciary Committee
nomination hearing on July 26, 2012, said he would support action by Congress to repeal Leegin. The
Senate Judiciary Committee approved Mr. Baer’s nomination on September 20, 2012. The nomination
will now proceed to the full Senate.


Conclusion. Despite the clear holding in Leegin applying rule of reason analysis to RPM, the
ultimate impact of that decision at both the federal and state level remains uncertain. The most prudent
conclusion for any company with national distribution would be that RPM agreements are at risk of
being successfully challenged as per se violations in one or more states, either by the state itself or in a
private damage action.

Thus, the safest course of action for businesses that distribute their products nationally is to treat
resale price maintenance as was usually done prior to the Leegin decision—i.e., by unilaterally
announcing suggested minimum resale prices, without requesting or allowing any agreement by
distributors to adhere to those prices, with the option of terminating distributors that ignore them.
Another option is to implement a minimum advertised price (MAP) program where the distributor gets
advertising funds back from the supplier if it advertises prices only above a certain level. While there is
some risk associated with this option since courts and agencies might see a MAP program as an effort to
implement RPM, such a program should pass muster, especially if it merely determines the distributor’s
eligibility for the supplier’s coop advertising funds and allows the distributor to advertise prices below
those specified in the MAP program at its own expense.



So, it would seem that it is still illegal in some states, and highly questioned in others. I haven't found a follow-up article, but continue to look.



And, so far all of our discussion has been solely relating to the US.

My (admittedly limited) understanding is that while a lot of the world turns a blind eye, there are countries which have stricter interpretations, more in line with the original ruling in the US.