Re: POL: Reaction to Microsoft Ruling

From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Tue Apr 11 2000 - 19:46:29 MDT


Zero Powers wrote:
>
> >From: Charlie Stross <charlie@antipope.org>
> >
> >On Mon, Apr 10, 2000 at 08:26:45AM -0400, Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
> > >
> > > Not so. Foreign companies cannot have anti-trust actions brought against
> > > them, only US based companies can be charged with such 'crimes'.
>
> Not quite. The reason I posted the link to the statute was so you could
> read it for yourself. If you had you would have known that there is nothing
> in the act which limits it to companies "based" in the US. I'll try again:
>
> http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/foia/divisionmanual/ch2.htm
>
> The short answer is, as long as a company's actions restrain "trade or
> commerce in any Territory of the United States" (regardless of where the
> company is based, they will be subject to the act.
 
Literally by your intepretation, yes, however the US has never brought
an anti-trust suit against a foreign company. Considering the weight of
corporate systems like the keiretsu, etc. as monopolistic enterprises, I
fail to see how the Justice department could tolerate a foreign national
government monopoly bringing anti-trust action against a US corp
(especially in light of how nice we have been to the French with their
desire to retain monopoly on the words 'Champagne' and 'Burgundy' for
their particular trade items that have been quite well duplicated
elsewhere.)

If the French were so keen on developing a 'viable' competition, why did
they not develop a Frogosoft corporation to compete with MS, as they did
to form Airbus to compete with Boeing (interesting Seattle parallel)?



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