Antitrust+Laws

= Antitrust Laws =

As a member of B&B Enterprises, it is important to become familiar with the three major antitrust laws to prevent violation of them.

There are three major antitrust laws:
 * **Sherman Antitrust Act**
 * This outlaws all contracts, combinations, and conspiracies that unreasonably restrain interstate trade. This includes agreements among competitors to fix prices, rig bids, and allocate customers. The Sherman Act also makes it a crime to monopolize any part of interstate commerce.
 * **Clayton Act**
 * This prohibits mergers or acquisitions that are likely to lessen competition.
 * **Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA)**
 * This prohibits unfair methods of competition in interstate commerce.

These laws are put into motion in the following examples:
 * The 4,500 members of the College of American Pathologists have been conspiring to set unduly high prices on services such as urinalyses and blood tests, and they have tried to drive nonmembers out of the lucrative lab business.
 * The defendant was ordered and directed to take all action necessary to restore competition to the commercial medical laboratory industry in the United States.
 * Dairy companies have been conspiring since at least the early 1980's to rig bids to supply milk and other dairy products to public school districts and other public institutions in several states and have been prosecuted for it.

For more information on the Antitrust Laws, please visit the [|Guide to the Antitrust Laws].