Anti-Trust Law

Paper Summary:

This paper begins by describing anti-trust law as any law restricting business practices considered unfair or monopolistic. It provides a history of the law in America's judicial system, covering the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of 1914, and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. The paper then discusses two key historic anti-trust cases in which the companies have been charged with anti-trust violations, American Telephone and Telegraph (1982) and Microsoft Corporation (1994 and 1998).

From the Paper:

"AT&T was a natural monopoly, which needed to be broken up in order to allow others into the market. It was the only service provider at the time and in order to help improve the economy, it was important that changes be made to the status quo. Microsoft on the other hand, may be the dominant player in the world of operating systems, but there are other providers out there. Systems such as Linux and Unix are available for consumers. They may not be as user friendly as the Windows operating system, but there is a choice for the consumer. The question that needs to be asked is this: how is the consumer treated as a result of services being bundled in one package? Is the average consumer getting his money's worth? Are these services affordable? How efficient is this method of bundling? If the answers to all these questions benefit the customer, then Microsoft and any dominant player in a business, has done well."

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