EU fines Asus, Denon-Marantz, Philips and Pioneer $130M for online price fixing
Question for any lawyers&#x2F;legal observers out there:<p>What exactly did these companies do wrong?<p>From the article, &#x27;If those retailers did not follow the prices requested by manufacturers, they faced threats or sanctions such as blocking of supplies.&#x27;<p>Does this imply that any retailer in the EU has a legal right to sell goods at any price? If I&#x27;m a retailer reselling Asus or Phillips products at cost in order to gain market share, how is that not anti-competitive behavior as well? I don&#x27;t understand why suppliers cutting off supplies to retailers is anti-competitive in this case.<p>As anyone who has done business with Amazon through Vendor Central can attest to, Amazon gives you no ability to control the sale price of your goods. Their pricing algorithms automatically adjust the price on most items &quot;Sold and fulfilled by Amazon.com&quot; to be the lowest on the internet.<p>To me, there is a very troubling extension of the EU&#x27;s logic here. Quite famously, the high end cookware manufacturer Wusthof tried to prevent Amazon from selling its products, since Amazon was undercutting the value of its brand by offering massive discounts over prices on Wusthof&#x27;s own site, and its brick and mortar distribution channels.<p>Does this mean that under this EU ruling, that Amazon could sue Wusthof for attempting to &quot;block&quot; its supply of Wusthof goods?<p>To take it a step further, Amazon lost money on each early-model Kindle sold. If Amazon attempted to rapidly gain market share in say the chocolate market by reselling Lindt or Godiva chocolate slightly below cost, how does the anti-trust law work out here? Amazon would arguably be engaging in anti-competitive behavior, while the chocolate maker could be fined for telling Amazon it planned to withhold future supplies?<p>I&#x27;m generally a big supporter of consumer rights legislation and enforcement, but this makes me wonder if the EU is going too far. Their ruling seems to have the potential to open up a huge can of worms, and may actually entrench the monopoly power of larger ecommerce sellers.