How to Defend Against Antitrust Violation Charges

The definition of success in the business world is increasing the market share that your business controls. Your company's increasing profits and expansion into new markets may chafe against antitrust laws designed to help small businesses succeed. You need to utilize comprehensive legal and public relations efforts to defend against antitrust violation charges.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Ride out complicated antitrust lawsuits to place pressure on the prosecuting party to agree to a financial settlement. The current trend in antitrust law resolution is a substantial settlement agreeable to both parties to avoid bad publicity and high legal fees.
2. Ask competing business owners with a favorable view of your company to testify on your behalf in court. You can defend against charges of monopolization of a market sector by demonstrating support among competitors for your actions.
3. Seek legal briefs from university professors, economists and business analysts to help defend against antitrust violation charges. You can contact experts you have worked with in the past, as well as a few independent experts, to provide perspective on your company's role within your industry.
4. Analyze the level of exclusivity to a particular geographical region as you defend against charges of antitrust violations. Your attorneys must demonstrate that other companies have fair access to retailers and customers in a particular market.
5. Review vendor contracts with materials suppliers and production companies to determine the openness of competition for third-party companies. Your contracts must be devoid of excessive penalties and unreasonable contract lengths to stand the test of antitrust laws.
6. Supply your attorney a full menu of your services to help build a defense against antitrust accusations. Antitrust laws at the federal and international level have strict regulations about bundling products to limit product choices and increase prices.
7. Expose past efforts by complaining parties to undercut competition in an effort to discredit antitrust allegations. You can review past court cases and press releases to build a case that antitrust suits are designed to harm industry leaders.
8. Argue that the digital marketplace creates an open market for certain products to undercut accusations of antitrust violations. Online marketing, software and music websites without a real-life business component can block antitrust suits by proving open access is available to every company in your industry.

Tips & Warnings

• Perform a market analysis for your industry to help defend against antitrust violation charges. A market analysis will look at the profit margins, stock levels and approach of competing companies to demonstrate a robust level of competition. You should utilize an independent analyst to avoid conflicts of interest in this report.