Examples Of Antitrust Laws

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Business Ethics Carly Smith DeVry University Abstract The United States has several different laws that are intended to maintain fair, balanced, and competitive business practices to ensure that all business big or small be treated fairly or face persecution for breaking antitrust laws. In this paper I will discuss just a few of the antitrust laws that are currently set in place and businesses must abide by. Companies today are prone to conspiring with its competition to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. The best example of this is with the giant retailer Apple. Apple recently lost in federal court with the judge ruling that Apple conspired with 5 of the nation’s largest publishing companies for the release of their new…show more content…
A good example of some of the laws placed today on businesses to protect the consumers from price inflation and customer allocation. Car dealerships in the past who were in the surrounding area of each other would either do one of two things prior to current laws being enforced and placed in the antitrust laws. The first thing that they would do is continuously undercut each other’s pricing and financing until the profit margin was unsustainable for one of the companies causing them to either file bankruptcy, sell the business, or make a phone call to the competitor and attempt to make a plea agreement with the other company to keep from going out of business. That conversation would include offering not to undercut its competitors pricing any further allowing both companies to remain in business and still keep a good profit margin. When those agreements are initiated it is not necessarily a bad law to break in my eyes because it at the end of the day keeps people employed and is helping the economy. However it is still illegal and the court has the right and the power based upon certain facts and evidence to make the decision if the companies were breaking the antitrust laws. The other thing that the car dealers would do in the past would do is called customer allocation, meaning the two companies or sometimes three companies would all get together and do what they called customer allocation so that all companies could benefit and stay in business. They would say if a customer is willing to spend a certain amount of money on a vehicle then they would send the people this dealership A, if the consumer was willing to spend less then what the agreement was set between companies than they would be referred to dealership B. The government instituted laws to prevent this from happening and protecting the consumers allowing them to

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