Resale (Retail) Price Maintenance (RPM)

Agreements, arrangements, activities, or practices between supplier and dealer/retailer to establish a minimum price or price level to be observed by the dealer when reselling a products or services to customers. RPM can be achieved directly or indirectly. RPM arrangements and activities are almost always regarded as serious and per se violations of competition and antitrust law. The US Supreme Court in 2007, in the case Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., reversed a century of prior precedent and law to rule that RPM was not per se illegal or even presumptively illegal and rather was subject to the Rule of Reason at the same time making the US the only modern competition regime to not treat RPM as presumtively ilegal. The decision can reasonably regarded as an extreme example of conservative judicial activism in antitrust law.

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