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David Park, William Rooney, Nov 02, 2006
In a relatively rare “predatory bidding” case, Weyerhaeuser Co. v. Ross-Simmons has been granted certiorari by the U.S. Supreme Court, apparently in a effort to clarify whether the antitrust laws protect price competition on the buy side to the same extent that they protect price competition on the sell side. But that question will likely be answered by resolving, in turn, the issue of whether buy-side competition is valued as an important mechanism for allocating input resources among competitors and markets or only insofar as buy-side competition directly causes low consumer prices. To the extent that the Court provides direction as to the proper standard, the Court will likely clarify whether buy-side competition is valued under the antitrust laws for “predatory bidding” as itself a component of allocative efficiency or only insofar as buy-side competition causes low consumer prices.
