She’s buying the stairway to heaven…
So: In the US, it is not illegal to be a monopoly, nor to hold monopoly over a kind of good or service. In order to be illegal, you must actively and provably work against a consumer. If, say, you shut your competition out of the market, and then immediately raise your prices by 70% while ceasing to innovate on your product, that would definitely be grounds for a suit.
In order to win such a suit, a litigant would have to prove that innovation or price drops would have happened had their been competition, a tough call to make! Nevertheless, the suit against EA is more than
an interesting spasm against an intractable corporate juggernaut, made more so given that EA now finds itself under the FTC magnifying glass as a result of its struggle to swallow Take-Two Interactive.
It’s a legitimate complaint. I look forward to seeing it’s progression.
Update: Ron Coleman tells me that “I don’t think the rule of reason says monopolies are always ok unless you can show a negative effect on consumers. I think you can show a negative effect on competition and meet the standard”
So I guess I’m wrong. Not so wrong that it destroys my argument, but definitely wrong enough that you don’t want me as your lawyer…
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