US Court Brings Back Price Fixing Lawsuit Against Major Record Labels

from the all-priced-the-same? dept

For many years, we've wondered why the major labels haven't gotten in trouble for what appears to be clear price fixing -- having all of the major labels band together to both demand identical wholesale pricing and attempt to dictate retail pricing by partners as well. There have been various investigations by both local and federal officials, along with a few lawsuits -- but nothing has really gone very far. One lawsuit was tossed out by the district court back in 2008, but in a surprising move, the 2nd circuit appeals court has revived the lawsuit, claiming that the evidence is "sufficient to plausibly suggest" price fixing by the major labels with regards to digital music. So now it goes back to the lower court. I still doubt this will really have much of an impact, but it's nice to see some recognition of what's seemed pretty obvious for quite some time.

Filed Under: antitrust, price fixing, record labels
Companies: emi, sony music, time warner, universal music, vivendi, warner music group

If That's Price Fixing, You're Doing It Wrong

from the price-fixing-means-prices-don't-drop... dept

There was plenty of news coverage this week of the $585 million in criminal fines against Sharp, LG and Chunghwa for price fixing on LCD displays. LG is paying the largest share at $400 million -- though, in the interest of disclosure, I should note that I'm writing this post using an LG LCD monitor that I got for quite a good price a few months back. And that brings up an issue I haven't seen addressed anywhere, other than by Adam Theirer: if this was price fixing, the companies were doing it wrong. Prices on LCDs were sliding very quickly, and it while there may have been some collusion among these three providers, it didn't seem to do much good. That's partly because there were plenty of other providers in the market, so any attempt at collusion was rather ineffective in stopping the rapid decline in prices. Sure, collusion is a bad thing, but we see this over and over again in antitrust enforcement: regulators keep punishing certain activities without bothering to see if they actually do anything to harm consumers.

Filed Under: lcd, price fixing
Companies: chunghwa, lg, sharp

eBay Strikes Back, Sues For Frivolous DMCA Takedowns

from the good-for-them dept

For quite some time we've seen companies try to make bogus intellectual property claims against people reselling their products on eBay. For example, a company making shampoo once claimed that you couldn't resell its bottles online -- even when legally purchased. The companies always claim that only "authorized" resellers are allowed to sell their products, and they must do so at a specific price. Last year, when the Supreme Court changed rules about whether manufacturers could demand retailers abide by a specific price, it kicked off speculation that we'd see more such cases. In fact, that's exactly what happened. In one case, a company named Innovate! Technology claimed that someone selling their products on eBay violated their intellectual property (including patents, trademarks and copyright!). The real complaint, of course, had nothing to do with intellectual property, but that this seller was selling below the company's official pricing. This seemed pretty ridiculous already, but these types of cases are designed to scare off small time sellers who don't have big legal guns to back them up.

However, Innovate appears to have made a huge strategic error that has brought some big legal guns into the case, and they're clearly pointed at shooting Innovate's use of the DMCA down. Greg Beck writes in to note that while the case was directly between Innovate and the eBay seller, Innovate made the mistake of pushing to get eBay involved in the case. Normally, eBay just does what's required of it in DMCA cases and gets out of the way. However, now that eBay is involved, it got involved in a big way. It's fighting back against Innovate, claiming that Innovate has been filing bogus DMCA requests and so now eBay is seeking damages, attorney's fees and an injunction preventing Innovate from filing any more DMCA notices to eBay. In other words, it's trying to make an example of Innovate. Hopefully it works, and others pursuing this same strategy of trying to stop legitimate competition through bogus DMCA notices will think twice before continuing.

Filed Under: dmca, first sale, price fixing, takedown
Companies: ebay, innovate