FTC offers workshops on resale price maintenance

There has been a lot of discussion about what constitutes price-fixing by a manufacturer since the Leegin decision last year: Under what circumstances can a manufacturer dictate prices to its retailers?

If your company might be interested in using some form of price maintenance program, but aren't certain if you would be safe in doing so, you might wish to send your corporate attorneys to these workshops at the Federal Trade Commission.

The Federal Trade Commission today announced that it will hold a series of public workshops early next year to explore, for the purposes of enforcing Section 1 of the Sherman Act and Section 5 of the FTC Act, how to best distinguish between uses of resale price maintenance (RPM) that benefit consumers and those that do not. The Commission expects the workshops to focus on legal doctrines and jurisprudence related to RPM, theoretical and empirical economic research, and business and consumer experiences.

There will be 4-6 workshops in the January-March timeframe, although exact dates haven't been set.

(Thanks to Consumer Goods & Retail Industry Litigation Blog for letting us know about this).