LePage's, Inc. v. 3M

LePage's Inc. v. 3M, 324 F.3d 141 (3d Cir. 2003), is a 2003 en banc decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upholding a jury verdict against bundling. Bundling is the setting of the total price of a purchase of several products or services over a period from one seller at a lower level than the sum of the prices of the products or services purchased separately from several sellers over the period. Typically, one of the bundled items (the "primary product" or "monopoly product" or "non-contestable product") is available only from the seller engaging in the bundling, while the other item or items (the "secondary product" or "contestable product") can be obtained from several sellers. The effect of the bundling is to divert purchasers who need the primary product to the bundling seller and away from other sellers of only the secondary product. For that reason, the practice may be held an antitrust violation as it was in the LePage's case, in which the Third Circuit held that 3M engaged in monopolization in violation of Sherman Act § 2 by (1) offering rebates to customers conditioned on purchases spanning six of 3M's different product lines, and (2) entering into contracts that expressly or effectively required dealing exclusively with 3M.