Sherman Antitrust Act

“ Respondent argues that, as a competitor, it can show antitrust injury from a vertical conspiracy to fix maximum prices that is unlawful under § 1 of the Sherman Act, even if the prices were set above predatory levels. In addition, respondent maintains that any loss flowing from a per se violation of § 1 automatically satisfies the antitrust injury requirement. ”

“ A trademark cannot be legally used as a device for Sherman Act violation. Indeed, the Trade Mark Act of 1946 itself penalizes use of a mark 'to violate the antitrust laws of the United States.' [8]
We also reject the suggestion that the Sherman Act should not be enforced in this case because what appellant has done is reasonable in view of current foreign trade conditions. The argument in this regard seems to be that tariffs, quota restrictions and the like are now such that the export and import of antifriction bearings can no longer be expected as a practical matter ”

“ If the 'consignment' agreement achieves resale price maintenance in violation of the Sherman Act, it and the lease are being used to injure interstate commerce by depriving independent dealers of the exercise of free judgment whether to become consignees at all, or remain consignees, and, in any event, to sell at competitive prices. The fact that a retailer can refuse to deal does not give the supplier immunity if the arrangement is one of those schemes condemned by the antitrust laws. ”

“ To extend it to a context in which the regulatory process is being invoked genuinely, and not in a "sham" fashion, would produce precisely that conversion of antitrust law into regulation of the political process that we have sought to avoid. Any lobbyist or applicant, in addition to getting himself heard, seeks by procedural and other means to get his opponent ignored. Policing the legitimate boundaries of such defensive strategies, when they are conducted in the context of a genuine attempt to influence governmental action, is not the role of the Sherman Act. ”

“ To hold, as we do, that private suits may be instituted under § 4 of the Clayton Act to recover damages for Sherman Act monopolization knowingly practiced under the guise of a patent procured by deliberate fraud, cannot well be thought to impinge upon the policy of the patent laws to encourage inventions and their disclosure. Hence, as to this class of improper patent monopolies, antitrust remedies should be allowed room for full play. ”

“ The federal antitrust laws also do not regulate the conduct of private individuals in seeking anticompetitive action from the government. This doctrine, like Parker, rests ultimately upon a recognition that the antitrust laws, "tailored as they are for the business world, are not at all appropriate for application in the political arena." Noerr, supra, 365 U.S., at 141, 81 S.Ct., at 531. That a private party's political motives are selfish is irrelevant: "Noerr shields from the Sherman Act a concerted effort to influence public officials regardless of intent or purpose." ”

“ Whether a modification of the consent decree was proper in this case, where no changed circumstances were claimed, should not be determined by this Court summarily. Additionally, the District Court's determination that Columbia's contract provision constitutes resale price maintenance prohibited by the Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, raises substantial issues of antitrust law which we believe also ought to be briefed and argued. ”

“ Turn from the farm to the world of business which centers in the city and in the factory, and I think that all thoughtful observers will agree that the immediate service we owe the business communities of the country is to prevent private monopoly more effectually than it has yet been prevented. I think it will be easily agreed that we should let the Sherman antitrust law stand, unaltered, as it is, with its debatable ground about it, but that we should as much as possible reduce the area of that debatable ground by further and more explicit legislation ”

“ Report of the Attorney General's National Committee on the Antitrust Laws, at 171 (" [T] he cost defense has proved largely illusory in practice") .↑ Texaco continues the argument by summoning a parade of horribles whose march Texaco believes is at issue in this case: According to Texaco, the Court of Appeals' rule "would multiply distribution costs, rigidify and increase consumer prices, encourage resale price maintenance in violation of the Sherman Act . ”

“ According to popular belief, the Sherman Anti-trust Act is an imperfect piece of legislation; a measure which was drawn up hastily, without thorough study or knowledge of the economic and social problems which it was intended to solve. The corporations declare that it was never intended to meet industrial conditions as they exist now: labor leaders have repeatedly asserted that the framers of the measure never intended that it should affect organizations of labor. ”

“ The ground upon which the opposing view of this court proceeds is that such an agreement, nevertheless, constitutes an unlawful restraint of trade at common law and, in respect of interstate commerce, a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. ”

“ The Sherman Act inhibits contracts, combinations, and conspiracies to destroy competition in interstate and foreign trade and commerce as well as attempts to monopolize such trade. Sections 73 and 74 of the Wilson Tariff Act, as amended, [1] declare unlawful every combination, conspiracy, trust, agreement, or contract intended to operate in restraint of trade in, or free competition in respect of, or intended to increase the market price of, any article when one of the parties is engaged in importing the same, and give the courts power to prevent and restrain those who violate the act. ”

“ We cannot respect that solicitude by closing our eyes to the effect upon price competition of the removal from the market, by combination or conspiracy, of a class of traders. Nor do we propose to construe the Sherman Act to prohibit conspiracies to fix prices at which competitors may sell, but to allow conspiracies or combinations to put competitors out of business entirely. ”

“ Nothing appears save a large, successful organization which has attempted to protect the fruits of its own enterprise from use by competitors. To conclude on such evidence that the Associated Press has violated the Sherman Act is to ignore the repeated holdings of this Court that the purpose of the statute is to maintain free competition in interstate commerce and to eliminate only those restraints that unreasonably inhibit such competition. ”

“ Oppenheim, Federal Antitrust Legislation, 50 Mich.L.Rev. 1139; Kahn, A Legal and Economic Appraisal of the 'New' Sherman and Clayton Acts, 63 Yale L.J. 293; Adams, The 'Rule of Reason,' 63 Yale L.J. 348; Rostow, Monopoly Under the Sherman Act: Power or Purpose? ”

“ The exclusive use of that which is thus obtained always, in a sense, gives a competitive advantage over those less active and enterprising. The opinion seems to mean that no contract, however narrow its effect, however innocent its purpose, which in the least degree restricts competition, [25] can survive attack under the Sherman Act; that no such concept as a reasonable restraint, a restraint limited to the legitimate protection of one's property or business, and limited in space or in time, or affecting a few only of all those engaged in a given trade, is free of illegality. ”

“ We think it clear that the elimination of significant competition between First National and Security Trust constitutes an unreasonable restraint of trade in violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act. The case, we think, is governed by Northern Securities Co. ”

“ The Supreme Court, by a vote of five to four, decided that this agreement was prohibited by the Sherman Anti-trust Act, because, as an attempt to fix prices, it restrained trade. The famous Trans-Missouri decision, which settled this case, made the Sherman Law an insurmountable bulwark against all railroad combinations of this kind. Until this decision was finally given in 1897, this act had not been seriously regarded; after the Supreme Court had spoken, however, capitalists suddenly awoke to its significance. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the effect of the combination or conspiracy here was to restrain trade and commerce within the meaning of the Sherman Act. Elimination, by joint collaborative action, of discounters from access to the market is a per se violation of the Act. ”

“ Trade restraints of this character, aimed at the destruction of competition, tend to block the initiative which brings newcomers into a field of business and to frustrate the free enterprise system which it was the purpose of the Sherman Act to protect. ”

“ Agreements fixing the competitive sales price of articles moving interstate, not within the protection of a patent, are unlawful because prohibited by the Sherman Act.
It is familiar doctrine that the prohibition of a federal statute may not be set at naught, or it benefits denied, by state statutes or state common law rules. ”

“ These firm requirements derive from an awareness that the vice apt to exist in tying agreements 'is the wielding of monopolistic leverage; a seller exploits his dominant position in one market to expand his empire into the next.' 345 U.S. at page 611, 73 S.Ct. at page 882. It is not, as the Court intimates at one point in its opinion, that under the Sherman Act the tying clause is illegal per se; the per se illegality results from its use by virtue of a vendor's dominance over the tying interest to foreclose competitors from a substantial market in the tied interest. ”

“ Under this grant of power Congress has enacted, and the courts have upheld, a great mass of social and economic legislation having to do only remotely with commerce. For example, the Sherman Act and other anti-trust legislation, ostensibly mere regulations of commerce, but actually designed for the control and suppression of trusts and monopolies; the federal Pure Food and Drugs Act, designed to prevent the adulteration or mis-branding of foods and drugs and check the abuses of the patent-medicine industry ”

“ Despite possible advantages to a stable economy from efficient cartels with firm or fixed prices for products, it is crystal clear from the legislative history and accepted judicial interpretations of the Sherman Act that competition on prices is the rule of congressional purpose and that where exceptions are made, Congress should make them. The monopoly granted by the patent laws is a statutory exception to this freedom for competition and consistently has been construed as limited to the patent grant. ”

“ Agreements for price maintenance of articles moving in interstate commerce are, without more, unreasonable restraints within the meaning of the Sherman Act because they eliminate competition, United States v. ”

“ The existence of such economic injustice was continually urged in support of popular demands for the control of corporations by the Government. Though the Republican leaders were much averse to providing such control, they found inaction so dangerous that on January 14, 1890, Senator John Sherman reported from the Finance Committee a vague but peremptory statute to make trade competition compulsory. This was the origin of the AntiTrust Law which has since gone by his name, although the law actually passed was framed by the Senate judiciary committee. ”