For those of you unable to follow my live Twitter feed from the press conference yesterday morning (granted, for those of you on the West coast I started at 5am), I attempted to capture a lot of the sentiment coming out of an event featuring retailers, consumer advocates and government representatives who promised a hearing in the New Year and a re-introduced, two-page bill to ban RPM or “price-fixing.” This would overturn the Leegin Supreme Court decision of 2007 (see my previous post for background).

Those in favor or RPM – like The National Association of Manufacturers for example – say it prevents deep discounters from hurting brands’ prestige or perceived quality. Instead of “price-fixing” they see it as brand management. But according to American Antitrust President, Bert Foer, this is missing the big picture. “The Supreme Court underplayed the magnitude of the anticompetitive risks of price-fixing. The Court did not account for the fact that it leads to higher prices, reduced efficiency and lost innovation in retailing. They failed to recognize how those risks have grown with increasing retail concentration.”

The panel of policymakers and retail advocates including eBay’s VP of global government relations, Tod Cohen (pictured above), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour, offered a number of different courses of action to address the impact of RPM / price fixing including definitive government action and support. Harbour also announced that starting early next year, the FTC will hold a series of workshops educating people on best practices of RPM.

It was a good discussion that saw a number of representatives sharing their views and expressing a desire to work toward a common goal. BabyAge.com President Jacob Weiss shared pricing examples showing that prices rose 20 to 40 percent after the Leegin decision on several popular products from car seats to backpack child carriers. Weiss provided screenshots showing the same $60 price for Elmo Live toys from ToysRUs.com, Walmart.com, Amazon.com and Target.com.

Audio
• You can listen to NPR’s coverage of the event yesterday by clicking HERE.

• Full audio of the press conference is now available HERE.

Images
• Some photos from the event can be found on eBay’s Government Relations’ new Flickr feed.

Related Information
• You can learn more about eBay’s stance on price-fixing HERE.

• To see the majority of the media stories covering this topic, and to find out more about how you can get involved, check out protectconsumerchoice.org.

Cheers,
RBH