The E-Books Conspiracy: Crossing the Line Between Applying and Creating Law

This article responds to John Kirkwood’s Collusion to Control a Powerful Customer: Amazon, E-Books, and Antitrust Policy. Professor Kirkwood argued that in a monopsonistic market (i.e., one where there exists one powerful buyer and many less powerful sellers), or a market in which a buyer has significantly more power than the sellers, collusion on the part of the sellers might be justified, and ought to be a defense to antitrust claims, under certain conditions. This article summarizes Kirkwood’s proposed requirements for invoking this defense and argues that they are overly prescriptive, failing to allow certain instances of beneficial collusion, imposing costly burdens on the sellers, and providing the courts with a set of rules more akin to legislation than a method of interpreting existing antitrust law