Common Contracts
1 similar Resale Price Maintenance Agreement contracts
LEEGIN’S UNEXPLORED “CHANGE IN CIRCUMSTANCE”: THE INTERNET AND RESALE PRICE MAINTENANCEResale Price Maintenance Agreement • April 9th, 2008
For almost a century, agreements between retailers and suppliers fixing a minimum resale price, also known as minimum resale price maintenance (RPM) or vertical minimum price fixing agreements,1 were considered per se violations of the Sherman Act.2 For example, Polo could not have entered into a contract with Macy’s requiring Macy’s to sell a particular shirt for at least sixty dollars. However, over time the Supreme Court slowly relaxed the restrictions on other types of vertical agreements, such as vertical maximum price fixing3 and nonprice restrictions.4 In addition, economists posited procom- petitive justifications for the use of RPM. It was unsurprising, there- fore, when the Court held in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc.5 that RPM agreements should not be prohibited as per se unlawful, but rather should be subject to rule of reason analysis.6 Re- actions to the decision ranged substantially. Some predicted doom for low-priced retailers like Wal-Mart,7 while
