Hugo Black

“ Both the federal and state 'Fair Trade' Acts expressly provide that they shall not apply to price maintenance contracts among producers, wholesalers and competitors. It follows that whatever may be the rights of an individual producer under the Miller-Tydings Amendment to make price maintenance contracts or to refuse to sell his goods to those who will not make such contracts, a combination to compel price maintenance in commerce among the states violates the Sherman Act. ”

“ The power of retailers to coerce out-of-state producers can be just as effectively exercised through pressure brought to bear upon wholesalers as though the retailers brought such pressure to bear directly upon the producers. ”

“ The combination concerned itself with the type of contract used in making interstate sales; its coercive power was used to compel the producers of alcoholic beverages outside of Colorado to enter into price maintenance contracts. Nor did the boycott used merely affect local retail business. Local purchasing power was the weapon used to force producers making interstate sales to fix prices against their will. It may be true, as has been argued, that under Colorado law, retailers are prohibited from buying from out-of-state producers, but this fact has no relevancy. ”

“ It permits the seller of an article which bears his trade mark, brand, or name, to prescribe a minimum resale price by contract, if such contracts are lawful in the state where the resale is to be made and if the trademarked article is in free and open competition with other articles of the same commodity. ”

“ Those combinations which the Sherman Act makes illegal as to producers, wholesalers and retailers are expressly exempted from the scope of the Fair Trade Act of Colorado, and thus have no legal sanction under state law either. ”