The U.S. Supreme Court has made it easier for manufacturers to set minimum resale prices by overturning the per se” illegality of minimum resale price agreements.
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Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that challenges to minimum resale prices will be judged on a case-by-case basis by the “rule of reason,” a more flexible legal doctrine that requires the challenger to prove price-setting was anticompetitive and did economic harm.
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“Per se” was a much stricter enforcement that assumed that minimum price setting agreements were on their face illegal, regardless of circumstances. By changing the judgment from “per se” to “rule of reason,” the Supreme Court has made it more difficult for challengers of the law to win and less risky for manufacturers to set …