Twin Mechanisms for World Domination - Amazon's FBA-Prime Scheme

Written by linakhantakesamazon | Published 2023/10/27
Tech Story Tags: ftc-v.-amazon | antitrust | ftc | amazon-monopoly | amazon-fba | selling-on-amazon | amazon-prime-eligibility | amazon-antitrust-trial

TLDRAmazon's monopolistic practices include conditioning Prime eligibility on FBA use, which raises costs for sellers and hampers the growth of independent fulfillment providers. This strategy stifles competition and choice for sellers and shoppers, ultimately maintaining Amazon's monopolies in online markets.via the TL;DR App

FTC v. Amazon Court Filing, retrieved on Sep 26, 2023, is part of HackerNoon’s Legal PDF Series. You can jump to any part in this filing here. This is part 50 of 80.

c. Amazon unlawfully maintains its monopolies by conditioning Prime eligibility on sellers’ use of FBA

395. Through these twin mechanisms—(1) raising the costs for sellers of using multiple sales channels and (2) artificially stunting the growth of independent fulfillment providers—Amazon maintains its monopolies in the online superstore and online marketplace services markets by denying rivals the ability to gain the scale needed to compete meaningfully against Amazon.

396. (Redacted) Some sellers on Amazon that might otherwise also sell off Amazon choose not to due to the associated logistics and administrative costs, while other sellers offer only certain products to other online stores. Sellers must effectively accept Amazon’s burdensome terms, and Amazon’s rivals are thus deprived of the opportunity to meaningfully compete for sellers. By tying a product’s Prime eligibility to the seller’s use of FBA for that product, Amazon suppresses competition for sellers’ product selection and for online shoppers.

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This court case 2:23-cv-01495 retrieved on October 2, 2023, from ftc.gov is part of the public domain. The court-created documents are works of the federal government, and under copyright law, are automatically placed in the public domain and may be shared without legal restriction.


Written by linakhantakesamazon | The youngest person to ever chair the FTC, Lina Khan rose to prominence from her 2017 book, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox"
Published by HackerNoon on 2023/10/27