I am reading U.S. v. Paramont Picture, Inc. case and am reminded of a recent case I read regarding a group Apple et. al. v. Amazon books regarding price fixing and anti-trust.  In this case Amazon argued that Apple and others went into an arrangement where Amazon would be unable to maintain its discounted book price.  Apple argued that Amazon was also practicing business that violage anti-trust.  What strikes me interesting is that the Paramont case has a familiar ring to it in that a group of studios attempted to fix the price of consumer purchased tickets.

Here is a paragraph from this case:

"We start, of course, from the premise that so far as the Sherman Act is concerned, a price-fixing combination is illegal per se. United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U.S. 150 ; United States v. Masonite Corporation, supra. We recently held in United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364 , that even patentees could not regiment an entire industry by licenses containing price-fixing agreements. What was said there is adequate to bar defendants, through their horizontal conspiracy, from fixing prices for the exhibition of films in the movie industry. Certainly the rights of the copyright owner are no greater than those of the patenee."


As a wise man/woman once stated and restated, 'Nothing new under the sun'.


What do you think?


Source: Douglas.  Opinion.  (1964).  U.S. Supreme Court.  Retrieved July 8, 2012 from 
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=334&invol=131