Competition Matters

We encourage you to suggest a topic, or ask a question of the legal staff of the Ohio Attorney General’s Antitrust Section. Questions will be addressed in future issues of “Competition Matters.” 

A few powerful manufacturers that dominate the market and go to great lengths to conceal their lucrative price-fixing conspiracy? That’s an example of a “collusive oligopoly.”  

Seeking out and exchanging information with competitors is a normal business activity for many companies, and there are often legitimate reasons for competitors to do so. However, the exchange of sensitive information that leads to collusion, hurts competition, or harms consumers may violate antitrust laws. 

You can tailor the topics and timing of email communications from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. 

Anti-competitive agreements can take many forms. Conspirators may agree to bid only in a certain geographic region, or they may alternate winning bids by year. One group of conspirators, however, took a far more astral approach: they let the phases of the moon determine the bid winner.

An ongoing lawsuit filed by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and 45 other state attorneys general had a new development this fall. The attorneys general sought to add 12 new drug-maker defendants to a lawsuit that accuses several generic drug manufacturers of conspiring to reduce competition and inflate prices.