DailyDirt: Monopoly Isn't Just Some Game You Can Play...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

We've talked about monopolies of various kinds around here before, because monopolies are oftentimes fascinating examples of markets not quite doing what most folks think markets should do. Monopoly issues are also not as black-and-white as they're made out to be in the news, and there are some intriguing (unanswered) questions about how to properly regulate monopolies -- and numerous examples of unintended consequences of poor regulation. Here are just a few more stories on monopolies that you might have come across.

• Has Trader Joe's cornered the market on pretzels filled with peanut butter? It's a market worth tens of millions of dollars, and how many different brands can you think of that sell these kinds of snacks? Maxim Marketing claims to have invented the snack in the 1980s, and it's suing Trader Joe's and ConAgra for creating a peanut-butter-filled pretzel snack monopoly. [url]
• Maybe you've never heard of "Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha" -- but you've probably seen the initials YKK on some of your zippers. YKK is a Japanese company that has about half of the world's zipper business (however, zippers make up less than half of YKK's revenues). [url]
• Apple was once an underdog in the PC business, but when it got into smartphones, CEO Steve Jobs didn't shy away from his market power. Court documents reveal Jobs threatened Palm's CEO with patent lawsuits if Palm didn't agree to fix high tech worker wages and join a tech company alliance that wouldn't try to hire away employees from each other. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: market power, monopoly, policy, pretzels, regulation, steve jobs, wage fixing, ykk, yoshida kogyo kabushikikaisha, zippers
Companies: apple, conagra, maxim marketing, palm, trader joe's, ykk