Congress has taken preliminary steps to adopt legislation that would restore the rule that minimum resale price agreements between manufacturers and retailers, distributors or wholesalers, violate the Sherman Act without requiring proof of their anticompetitive effects.
More than two years ago, the Supreme Court overturned the 96-year-old rule established in a prior Supreme Court decision, Dr. Miles Medical Co. v. John D. Park & Sons Co., 220 U.S. 373 (1911), that made minimum resale price agreements (“RPM agreements,” also called “vertical price-fixing”) per se illegal under the Sherman Act, in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., 127 S. Ct. 2705 (2007). In Leegin, the Court held that RPM agreements should be evaluated under the rule of reason, a standard requiring that proof the agreement has unreasonably restrained competition. On January 13, 2010, the House Judiciary Committee met and voted on whether to adopt H.R. 3190, the “Discount Pricing Consumer Protection Act of 2009.” H.R. 3190 would overturn the ruling in Leegin and restore the per se rule of illegality with respect to RPM agreements.
Report on Hearing on H.R. 3190
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