Competition record
Dr. Miles Medical Company
Deep profile · 1 linked library matter
Dr Miles Medical Company sold patent medicines and tried to set the minimum price its dealers could charge. In 1911 the Supreme Court held those minimum resale prices illegal, and the library records the case as won by the plaintiff.
Overview
Dr Miles Medical Company was a patent-medicine business. It sold branded remedies through wholesalers and druggists and wrote contracts telling those dealers the lowest price they could charge. A wholesaler that cut the price, the Park firm, was the company Dr Miles sued to enforce the floor.
In 1911 the Supreme Court refused to treat the minimum resale price as a lawful contract. Agreements that forced the next seller to hold a price floor were per se illegal under the Sherman Act. A shop could not be bound to the maker's minimum. The library status is won by the plaintiff.
That per se rule stood for most of the twentieth century. The later Leegin decision overruled it, so minimum resale prices are no longer automatically illegal and are judged by their effects. This profile is the 1911 medicine company and that overruled rule.
Competition footprint
The restraint is vertical: a maker telling the reseller the lowest lawful price.
Patent medicines were consumer goods sold through druggists who might otherwise have discounted.
The library status follows the 1911 holding that the price floor was illegal.
Consumer & business angle
Patients and households buying the remedies were the shoppers a discounting druggist would have served.
Wholesalers who wanted to cut the price were the businesses the contract tried to bind.
What to watch
- How brand owners set minimum advertised prices after Leegin, when the automatic ban no longer applies.
- The difference between this 1911 medicine case and a modern resale policy that a court will actually weigh.
Markets
patent medicines · wholesale drugs · wholesale distribution
Also known as: dr miles, dr. miles