Antitrust Quotes & Sayings

The history of antitrust law enforcement shows that successful antitrust prosecutions have often strengthened and brought vitality to extremely large companies and businesses. — Robert Kennedy

The testimony and the documentary evidence produced by the Government demonstrate that the Bell System had violated the antitrust laws in a number of ways over a lengthy period of time. — Harold H. Greene

My current goal is to change the way we think about antitrust and anti-monopoly. — Zephyr Teachout

The tale of America coming out of the Great Depression and not only surviving but actually transforming itself into an economic giant is the stuff of legend. But the part that gives me goose bumps is what we did with all that wealth: over several generations, our country built the greatest middle class the world had ever known. We built it ourselves, using our own hard work and the tools of government to open up more opportunities for millions of people. We used it all - tax policy, investments in public education, new infrastructure, support for research, rules that protected consumers and investors, antitrust laws - to promote and expand our middle class. The spectacular, shoot-off-the-fireworks fact is that we succeeded. — Elizabeth Warren

This antitrust thing will blow over. — Bill Gates

Like IBM, the company [Microsoft] seems to have been spooked by the federal antitrust action against it and became increasingly sclerotic and less inventive. — Stephen Manes

I have the most profound respect for the Department of Justice and the FTC. We in Europe are a younger and I would say junior institution to the historical antitrust experience of the US. — Mario Monti

A significant piece of the wealth that the NFL owners garner is a result of the enormous TV revenues they get - and those revenues are supported by a legislatively granted exemption from the antitrust laws that has been made applicable to sports leagues, primarily the NFL. — Eliot Spitzer

Like other antitrust agencies we make our assessment of a merger or antitrust case based on its impact on our jurisdiction, and not on the nationality of the companies. This is exactly what the U.S. antitrust agencies, the Justice Department and the FTC, do. — Mario Monti

A competitive threat is not the same thing as an antitrust violation ... It is difficult to make out FairSearch's precise antitrust arguments. There are alternatives to ITA's software: both the GDSs but also upstarts such as the U.K.'s Everbread Ltd., which has relationships with 60 low-cost carriers, and Vayant Travel Technologies LLC of New York. It isn't clear, therefore, that competition would be reduced even if Googled didn't honor ITA's contracts with other travel companies. — Peter Gallagher

From search and books to online TV and operating systems, antitrust affects our daily digital lives in more ways than we think. — Marvin Ammori

We can speculate on what's likely, but what's needed is an investigation. And speculation is no substitute for facts. As a former prosecutor, I prosecuted antitrust cases civilly. And I can say that antitrust investigations merit searching, penetrating scrutiny and investigation. That's what we need here. — Richard Blumenthal

Changing technologies, changing marketplaces, and even changing trends in anti-competitive practices have all presented challenges to antitrust enforcement. — Al Franken

and from the enactment in 1890 of the Sherman Act, the first of the great federal antitrust statutes. And — E. Allan Farnsworth

Harl is a tenacious advocate for antitrust action against agribusiness, but he's not optimistic that without pressure from consumers, the government will go after these huge monopolies that control our food. "There's a huge amount of money and a lot of pressure applied whenever someone in Washington tries to do something about this," he told me. "That pressure is applied in the form of messages like 'Look, if you let this go on, we're going to diminish our support for your campaign.' When things get bad enough that consumers rise up, that's when we'll get another era of antitrust." How much money is involved? — Kristin Ohlson

(When the company was finally broken up in the 1980s to satisfy antitrust regulators, it was worth more than the combined worth of General Electric, General Motors, Ford, IBM, Xerox, and Coca-Cola, and employed a million people.) Bell moved to Washington, D.C., became — Bill Bryson

In reality, that was going to be very messy from an antitrust standpoint and meet a lot of resistance from the top management at Hasbro. That was a whole different story. — Harold L. Vogel

Why should antitrust laws be used to block mergers that the market, by the existence of willing buyers and sellers, shows to be desirable? — HENRY MANNE

The standard formulation on remedy is that it ought to cure past violations and prevent their recurrence. That's what antitrust is all about. — Charles James

True market fundamentalists in the economics profession are few and far between. Not only are they absent from the center of the profession; they are rare at the "right-wing" extreme. Milton Friedman, a legendary libertarian, makes numerous exceptions, on everything from money to welfare to antitrust: Our principles offer no hard and fast line how far it is appropriate to use government to accomplish jointly what is difficult or impossible for us to accomplish separately through strictly voluntary exchange. In any particular case of proposed intervention, we must make up a balance sheet, listing separately the advantages and disadvantages. — Bryan Caplan

The antitrust litigation currently in the federal courts in the U.S. against Monsanto will be the test case in the life sciences, just as the Microsoft case was the test case in the information sciences. — Jeremy Rifkin

Regardless of the industry, antitrust law is meant to benefit consumers - not competitors. — Marvin Ammori

Beware of that profound enemy of the free enterprise system who pays lip-service to free competition, but also labels every antitrust prosecution as a persecution. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Vigilant and effective antitrust enforcement today is preferable to the heavy hand of government regulation of the Internet tomorrow. — Orrin Hatch

As freak legislation, the antitrust laws stand alone. Nobody knows what it is they forbid. — Isabel Paterson

Under the antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. If he complies with one of these laws, he faces criminal prosecution under several others. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful 'intent to monopolize'; if he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for 'unfair competition' or 'restraint of trade'; and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for 'collusion' or 'conspiracy.' — Ayn Rand

Antitrust law isn't about protecting competing businesses from each other, it's about protecting competition itself on behalf of the public. — Al Franken

Most Americans don't think about antitrust law when they look at their cable bill, flip channels on TV, or worry about what their favorite website knows about them. But they should. — Al Franken

Apple Settles E-Book Antitrust Case Reuters — Anonymous

Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information. — Bill Gates

Antitrust laws ought to be deployed, not against business, but to bust this two-party monopoly, which subverts competition in government and rewards the colluding quislings with sinecures in perpetuity. — Ilana Mercer

Google, you fucking ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off. Grand theft. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death, because they know they are guilty. Outside of Search, Google's products - Android, Google Docs - are shit. [Steve Jobs] — Walter Isaacson

My advice is to sell any high tech company when the United States brings an antitrust suit, not because the company will be harmed by the suit, but because by the time the government understands a tech business well enough to sue it, the world has moved on. — John McGinnis

The 10 largest antitrust law firms in the United States have gone into the federal courts charging Monsanto with creating a global conspiracy in violation of the antitrust laws, to control the global market in seeds. — Jeremy Rifkin

Under the Constitution, federal law trumps both state and city law. But antitrust law allows states some exceptional leeway to adopt anticompetitive business regulations, out of respect for states' rights to regulate business. This federal respect for states' rights does not extend to cities. — Marvin Ammori

You can take this as a gentle word of warning, if you like. We are just at the beginning of a period of more intensive antitrust enforcement. — Neelie Kroes

We had planned to integrate a Web browser with our operating system as far back as 1993( filing its first court responses to federal antitrust) — Bill Gates