Wiggin and Dana's Franchise Law Blog

Independent Ink – Supreme Court Abandonment of Market Power Presumption

In this article Independent Ink – Supreme Court Abandonment of Market Power Presumption, Wiggin and Dana lawyer Erika Amarante discusses the March 2006 United States Supreme Court case, Illinois Tool Works, Inc. v. Independent Ink, Inc., 126 S. Ct. 1281 (2006), which “sounded the final death knell” on franchisor market power presumptions in the antitrust tying context that some United States Circuit Courts of Appeal had adopted. As noted in the article, the Court’s “long-overdue holding that tying is not per se illegal absent actual (not presumed) market power in the tying product will provide franchisors with additional ammunition for justifying their valid tying arrangements.”