Resale Price Maintenance in the Post-Leegin World: A Comparative Look at Recent Developments in the United States and European Union

The conventional wisdom today holds that the federal law of vertical restraints in the United States has been “harmonized.” Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Leegin, the nearly century-old per se rule that absolutely banned minimum resale price maintenance (“RPM”) has been abandoned. The more economically sound approach of the Court’s 1977 decision in Sylvania, which held that non-price intrabrand restraints should