bought the high-priced vitamins, which pushed up the prices more. Hoffman-La Roche pleaded guilty in May

1999 and agreed both to pay a fine of $500 million and to have at least one top executive be incarcerated for

four months.

Under U.S. antitrust laws, monopoly itself is not illegal. If a firm has a monopoly because of a newly patented

invention, for example, the law explicitly allows a firm to earn higher-than-normal profits for a time as a

reward for innovation. If a firm achieves a large share of the market by producing a better product at a lower

price, such behavior is not prohibited by antitrust law.

Restrictive Practices

Antitrust law includes rules against restrictive practices—practices that do not involve outright agreements to

raise price or to reduce the quantity produced, but that might have the effect of reducing competition.

Antitrust cases involving restrictive practices are often controversial, because they delve into specific
{"uploaded_via": "batch_uploader", "source_file": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf", "batch_upload": true, "creator": "PDFMiner", "title": "Principles of Microeconomics 3e", "creationdate": "2022-12-07T14:15:44-06:00", "source": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf", "file_name": "Microeconomics3e.pdf", "moddate": "2022-12-07T14:23:05-06:00", "file_type": ".pdf", "file_size_mb": 26.99, "total_pages": 597, "upload_timestamp": "2026-02-07T15:37:44.339247", "producer": "Prince 14.2 (www.princexml.com)", "file_hash": "830b81f41611ac67a490444dbb5d6aed292224606965b06965b914443c93331a"}