Topco

Topco is a cooperative through which independent grocers buy together. The point of the joint buying is a private label, a store brand that lets a local supermarket stand next to a national chain. Members are still separate retailers. They compete for shoppers where their stores overlap. The library's short name for the case is Continental TV. The company id is topco.

The arrangement the government challenged gave members exclusive territories for Topco-brand goods. A member could sell the brand in its area and the others would stay out. That is a geographic split among horizontal competitors. In United States v. Topco, in 1972, the Supreme Court treated that kind of market division as illegal per se. Per se means the court does not go on to ask whether the split was reasonable or helpful to small grocers. Dividing the map is itself the violation.

The library records the matter as won by the plaintiff. The cooperative's buying function is lawful to describe. The exclusive territories were the piece the Court condemned. Shoppers in a town lost a second store that might have carried the same private label and cut the price.

Exclusive territories for the Topco label are the restraint, on top of a joint-buying cooperative.

The 1972 Supreme Court decision is the per se rule against that horizontal division.

The library short name is Continental TV. The company in the decision is Topco.

Independent supermarkets gained a private label and gave up the right to sell it in a neighbor's territory.

Grocery shoppers in the overlap lost a competing retailer for those store-brand goods.