Regulation of Prices. Hearings on H.R. 13568 Jan. 5-11, 1917 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ...proposed in the Stephens bill would be a direct violation of the Sherman antitrust law, as well as invalid at common law, is not denied. In the opinion in Miles Medical Co. v. Park, 220 U. S., 373, the court, speaking of the plan of price fixing precisely like that of the Stephens bill, says: " The complainant's plan falls within the principle which condemns contracts of this class. It, in effect, creates a combination for the prohibited purposes. "It was concluded below that the restrictions sought to be enforced by the bill were invalid both at common law and under the act of Congress of July 2, 1890. We think that the court was right." But the proponents of the bill would lead us to believe that this view was something new and unexpected in the law, aud contrary to the numerous decisions of the lower Federal courts theretofore rendered, and was adopted by the Supreme Court only upon a narrow division of five to four. Such Is not the fact. The cuse which settled for all time the general question of the invalidity of such resale-price contracts at common law and under the antitrust laws was Miles Med. Co. v, Purk. It is true there was a dissent In that'case, but the court had already decided several years before, by unanimous opinion, that the owner of a copyright had no such power of fixing resale prices, and, as Mr. Justice Day says, in the Miles case, " It will hardly be contended with respect to such a matter, that the manufacturer of an article of commerce not protected by any statutory grant, is in any better case." So the matter was definitely determined in 1908 and 1911 by the highest court In the land. The only question that remained was whether the patent law expressly or implledly granted by its language to the owner of a patent the...