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1. In 2020, @openmarkets focused on developing a vision of fair competition
2. OMI sought to introduce sophistication into antitrust debates around “competition” and show that *not* all tactics by businesses to gain an advantage over rivals are healthy and worthy of legal protection.
3. Business rivalry is not categorically good: Some forms of competition can produce better terms for customers, higher wages for workers, and new and improved products, but other forms can yield inferior goods, more misinformation, and greater poverty and precarity for workers
4. The law unavoidably structures business competition. Members of Congress, antimonopoly regulators, and the public should discuss which forms of competition the law should permit and which it should prohibit https://publicseminar.org/essays/can-we-trust-monopolies-to-play-fair/
5. It’s long past due to retire vacuous platitudes like “the antitrust laws protect competition, not competitors.”
6. In July, OMI, as part of a large public interest coalition that includes @ColorOfChange, @heal_food, and @Public_Justice, petitioned @FTC to ban a common tactic used by dominant firms--exclusionary contracting https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/publications/petition-federal-communications-commission-ban-exclusionary-contracting
7. By restricting customers, distributors, or suppliers from doing business with their rivals, dominant firms such as Google, UFC, and Vyera Pharmaceuticals (Martin Shkreli’s company) have preserved their monopoly power https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/big-tech-and-antitrust-one-thing-the-next-president-can-do-to-curb-techs-power.html
8. Big food corporations grant distributors rebates for exclusively or mostly carrying their products at the expense of local (and often healthier) options from competitors https://www.foodandpower.net/latest/2020/05/20/report-exposes-system-of-big-food-kickbacks-to-cafeteria-contractors-cutting-out-local-producers?rq=rebates
9. Manufacturers of durable goods use exclusionary contracts to prevent independent firms from servicing their products and to restrict customers' right to repair https://slate.com/technology/2020/11/biden-ftc-right-repair-exclusive-contracts.html
10. In two amicus briefs, OMI explained how firms with market power use tying (conditioning the purchase of product 1 on the purchase of product 2) to preserve their dominance and extend it into new markets https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/publications/open-markets-institute-files-amicus-brief-to-appeal-the-practice-of-tying https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/publications/open-markets-files-amicus-brief-laying-out-harms-from-tying-and-urging-court-to-affirm-good-law-on-practice
11. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have been accused of using tying to protect their dominance and to take over new markets https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-maker-of-fortnite-is-showing-how-to-take-on-big-tech-51597960426
12. The Supreme Court has condemned tying when a firm has “appreciable economic power” and can “force the buyer into the purchase of a tied product that the buyer either did not want at all, or might have preferred to purchase elsewhere on different terms” https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/504/451/
13. In the fall, OMI filed a brief in support of a class action against AbbVie, which indiscriminately obtained patents to protect its monopoly over Humira. We argued that abuses of regulatory and judicial processes are an unfair form of competition https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/publications/open-markets-institute-files-amicus-brief-supporting-antitrust-lawsuit-on-humira-worlds-top-selling-drug
14. President-elect Biden, through good appointments to the FTC, can promote fair business rivalry by establishing clear rules on what constitutes permissible—and impermissible—methods of competition https://www.wired.com/story/antitrust-litigation-isnt-enough-biden-needs-to-go-further/
