A federal judge has refused to dismiss a pair of antitrust suits that accuse retail giant Babies R Us of conspiring with a group of manufacturers of “high-end” baby products to set minimum resale prices in order to squelch competition from Internet retailers.
The first suit was filed by two Internet retailers — BabyAge and BabyClub — which claim they were successfully competing with Babies R Us by undercutting its prices, but that their efforts to gain a foothold in the market were thwarted when Babies R Us persuaded the manufacturers to insist on minimum retail prices.
