Resale Price Maintenance and its Alleged Efficiencies

"The recent opinion of the US Supreme Court in the Leegin case, which overturned a century-long policy in the US of treating resale price maintenance (RPM) as a per se restriction of competition, is also stirring debate on the other side of the Atlantic and raises the question whether this should have relevance for EC competition policy. Answering such a question requires first, the current treatment of RPM in the EU to be assessed and secondly, the likely positive and negative effects of RPM to be critically assessed.

In this article I will therefore first discuss the current treatment of RPM in the EU and how it differs from the US per se approach. The main part of the article discusses the possible negative and, in particular, positive effects for consumers that may result from RPM as identified in the Leegin case."