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The Court of Appeal Resurrected The Washington DC Attorney General filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon more than three years ago, and the online retailer now must face charges that it illegally inflated prices for consumers.
The lawsuit was originally filed in 2021 and cited Amazon’s practices regarding third-party sellers on its platform. Specifically, it alleged that provisions in Amazon’s contracts with third-party sellers allow it to punish companies that sell their products at lower prices on platforms other than Amazon. Then-Attorney General Karl Racine said these agreements allowed Amazon to “impose artificially high floor prices across the online retail marketplace.” Racine later expanded the lawsuit to also target Amazon’s pricing strategies toward wholesalers.
Amazon contested those claims, and the suit was dismissed in 2022. But an appeals court has now reversed that decision. “Taken as a whole, the district court’s allegations regarding Amazon’s market share and maintenance of market power through the challenged agreements plausibly suggest that Amazon already has monopoly power over the online market or is approaching a ‘dangerous likelihood of achieving monopoly power,'” the judge wrote.
“We disagree with the District of Columbia’s complaint and look forward to presenting the facts in court that show how these policies are a good thing for consumers,” Amazon spokesman Tim Doyle told Engadget in a statement. “Just like a storeowner who doesn’t want to give their customers a bad deal, we don’t highlight or promote uncompetitive price offers. This is part of our commitment to selling low prices to earn and keep customer trust, and we believe it’s the right decision for both consumers and merchants in the long term.”
The shift in policy deepens Amazon’s antitrust woes: The company is facing lawsuits from the Federal Trade Commission and more than a dozen states, and British antitrust regulators have also launched an investigation into the company’s $4 billion investment in Anthropik.
Current Washington Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a statement that his district “was the first jurisdiction to bring an antitrust enforcement action” against the company. “Our case now moves forward, and we will continue to fight to stop Amazon’s unfair and unlawful conduct that has raised prices for Washington consumers and stifled innovation and choice across online retail,” he said.
Updated August 22, 2024 at 7:13pm: This story has been updated to add a statement from Amazon.
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