MR. REINDL: Good afternoon. Welcome back to our Friday
afternoon roundtable on Vertical Restraints, RPM, and Article 81 Analysis.
My name is Andreas Reindl. I am teaching U.S. antitrust and European
competition law here at Fordham and I work with Barry at the Fordham
Competition Law Institute.
The topic for the afternoon is quite a phenomenon. I remember a
competition law roundtable in Brussels about five or six years ago. The
topic was vertical restraints. I remember quite well that it was almost
painful to watch the two panelists desperately trying to come up with
something to say that they would think was interesting, let alone the
audience thought was really very interesting. At that time, no one really
thought that vertical restraints was any longer a particularly interesting
topic in either U.S. antitrust law or European competition law.
Things have really changed. We decided to have a half-day session
devoted solely to this topic. I’m sure those of you who are really interested
in the topic probably listened already to two programs earlier this week on
the same issues and probably will have two or three more next week.
So the interest in the topic of vertical restraints has really come back
to life. Maybe this is in part because we all got sick and tired of discussions
of Article 82 and Section 2 and all kinds of tests that didn’t really seem to
produce tangible results. But clearly, the main reason is that the Court
decided Leegin and this coincided with the European Commission’s effort
to review the current vertical restraints regime.
You all are familiar with the debate about RPM, which has become
very loud and emotional at times. Having this type of debate, of course,
makes sense only if we don’t just exchange views, tell each other what
views we hold, but if we also manage to identify in what direction the
debate should lead us.