Does the site create a monopoly or a monopsony?
• Does the site facilitate inappropriate information exchange? • Does the site have auction functions that operate in an anticompetitive manner? • From an analytical perspective, should Internet sites be treated like retail and other marketing formats that help define the product market? A brief discussion of each point follows. • Does the Internet B2B site as an unadorned agreement to fix prices, curtail output, or divide markets? Are the site’s activities illegal per se? If the facts show a per se violation, there is no defense to finding that the antitrust laws have been violated since courts have concluded that this type of activity has no procompetitive benefits. The judicial trend, however has been to limit application of the per se approach and increasingly to apply a rule of reason analysis. This seems particularly appropriate in the B2B context, where certain types ofmarketplaces will require disclosure of prices, and the nature of the marketplace is such that information will
