Amazon's Anti-Trust Woes Continue

The antitrust lawsuit against Amazon filed by the Attorney General of Washington, DC more than three years ago is again active. An Appeals Court cited that the online retailer must face allegations that it illegally raised prices for consumers.

It was in 2021 when the lawsuit was originally filed and it raised Amazon’s alleged practices related to third-party sellers on its platform. Specifically, it called out a provision in the company’s agreements with third-party sellers that allowed it to punish businesses that offered its products at lower prices on non-Amazon platforms.

Karl Racine, the Attorney General at the time, said these agreements allowed the company to "impose an artificially high price floor across the online retail marketplace." Racine later expanded the case to include Amazon’s pricing tactics for wholesalers.

Amazon has disputed those allegations, and the case was dismissed in 2022. However, an appeals court has now reversed that decision.

"Viewed as a whole, the District’s allegations about Amazon’s market share and maintenance of its market power through the challenged agreements plausibly suggest that Amazon either already possesses monopoly power over online marketplaces or is close to a 'dangerous probability of achieving monopoly power,'" the judge wrote.

"We disagree with the District of Columbia’s allegations and look forward to presenting facts in court that demonstrate how good these policies are for consumers," Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle told Engadget in a statement.

"Just like any store owner who wouldn’t want to promote a bad deal to their customers, we don’t highlight or promote offers that are not competitively priced. It’s part of our commitment to featuring low prices to earn and maintain customer trust, which we believe is the right decision for both consumers and sellers in the long run," Doyle added.

The reversal adds to Amazon’s antitrust woes. The company is also facing a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission (FDC) and more than a dozen states. The UK’s antitrust regulator has also opened an investigation centered around the company’s US$ 4 billion investment into Anthropic.