[LINK] (fwd) B2B exchanges eye FTC report on antitrust issues | Computerworld News & Features Story

[rsedc]

http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47-68_STO53340,00.html

eCom guru Kalakota seems to have some interesting first hand
experience:

<quote>

   "I don't know what the FTC was smoking, but they're not looking at
the evidence,"
   Kalakota said of the commission's Oct. 26 report. The report set
forth what the FTC
   described as "guideposts" for evaluating individual B2B exchanges
but concluded that
   online marketplaces as a whole don't raise new antitrust concerns
(see story). 

   However, Kalakota, who runs an independent exchange for the
hospitality industry, sees
   things differently. Kalakota said he constantly comes across
individual hotel operators who
   tell him they're barred from buying goods through Hsupply.com under
franchise
   agreements with big-name companies such as ... <snip>

   So, in my marketplace, there's a huge antitrust issue because these
guys can put me out
   of business," Kalakota said. However, rather than take up any
action with the FTC,
   Kalakota said he plans to let things run their course in the
expectation that not all of the
   consortium efforts in the hospitality industry will survive in the
long run. 

   Last week's report, which was written by the FTC's staff and
unanimously authorized by
   the five commissioners, is based on information gathered during a
two-day workshop on
   B2B exchanges held last June in Washington (see story). As the FTC
sees it, there's no
   hard and fast evidence of anticompetitive behavior on the part of
Internet-based
   marketplaces, at least for now. In a statement, FTC Chairman Robert
Pitofsky said
   exchanges typically would lend themselves to "traditional antitrust
analysis." 

   But the report did lay out several conditions that could
potentially raise red flags and spur
   the FTC to take "a closer look" at individual online marketplaces.
These have to do with
   how large a share of a given vertical industry is held by a
marketplace's partners, whether
   any restraints have been placed on buying or selling outside of the
marketplace and the
   level of interoperability among different exchanges in the same
industry.

</quote>

--
David Chia,
RMIT University