GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - Anti-Trust, Competition Law and Anti-competitive practices

Just very recently a close friend of ours was a victim of anti competitive behavior by a competitor in the same business as him. Luckily for him access to very good lawyers and an abundance of government acts and bills have helped him retrieve all the damages and legal costs from the counter-party. A case which looked unfamiliar and very random to him actually turned to be a simple text book legal dispute that allowed him to win on the account that the competitor did explicitly harass the victim and victim?s company under the assumption that he is above the law and his knowledge of the law is flawless which didn?t leave any room for him to defend himself at court. This instance has been a great business experience for him and has made him much more prepared for the business not to mentioning the new ventures opened to him by the fact that the competitor had to give up their business licenses and pay sizeable amounts of fine to them and to the government for their unethical behavior. Being a close observer in the incident I felt it might be beneficiary for other fellow businessmen and women here to learn more about anti-competitive behavior. You might already be well informed about all this, in that case you don?t need to read on, but in case you are not, it is good to know about such matters certainly I was unaware of the details before the high priced lawyers broke them down for me.

Anti Competitive Behavior: Well you can look it up on Wikipedia but simply it is any behavior from a competitor in order to monopolize the market and drive other, possibly smaller competitors out of business. It can range from explicit or implicit threatening, defamation, use of derogatory or abusive language in order to scare the competitor and etc. This attitude can be very dangerous for a company; if they are a major player in the market because the European laws treat any company with more than 38% market share as major player and take their behavior toward the competitors very seriously as that simply gives grounds to the victim to go ahead make a claim for abuse. Anti competitive behavior is very easy to spot, throwing around complex legal jargon without knowing the meanings, threatening for legal action based on little or no grounds at all, trying to push the competitor into corner by abusing them using different aliases.
So now some you might say I have been in the same situation what do I do? Do I get a lawyer? Do I leave? Do I take the abuse? A lawyer is never a bad idea the pricier the better!
But among other things that governments provide for you is the protection against Anti Competitive behavior there are several centers you can call and report this type of behavior and you would be shocked at how seriously they will take the matters and react to it! The following ones are very quick and efficient if the company is based in US:

http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/contact.shtm
? Phone: Call our toll-free helpline: 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357);
TTY: 1-866-653-4261
? Mail: Write to:
Federal Trade Commission
Consumer Response Center
600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20580

The special division in the DOJ
http://www.justice.gov/atr/index.html

Filing a complaint is easy you can either do it over the web or call them or just get you lawyer to sort it out.
Now there is the icing on the cake, it is one thing to abuse another domestic company you get chased by the your own government, but say a company A in USA decides to abuse a company B in another countries and one that has very great ties with United States such as United Kingdom in that case, not only the claim can be filed with the local US authority but also with Local UK authority the EEA Authorities and after that the chamber of commerce of the victim?s home country and the chamber of commerce of other European countries in USA, on top of that the commercial attaché of the victim?s home country will pursue this matter to ensure that the US government holds up their end of deal. Regardless of what anyone would say about, one of the many things I love about US and respect it for, is their attitude toward business integrity and how it protects its reputation in Europe and makes sure it doesn?t do injustice which to me is very honorable and is among others the reason for it to be the USA that it is today. I wish one day I can say I belong to such a great democracy like USA.

The contacts for the EU sector are :

http://www.competition-commission.org.uk/
http://www.oft.gov.uk/
http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/

The lesson here is that you have to always protect yourself if you are the victim and if you are the one that is wronging others unknowingly you should always think twice, why start something that might damage you yourself at the end? Whereas if you focused the time and energy on your services you would have made more money and got better at what you do or even partner up with them to make more money.
One thing I never forget is my friend told me that he never had the slightest intention of going to court and getting into anyone into trouble but the other party never gave the issue a rest and kept poking.
Anyhow, I wish I have not bored you to death with this, I felt it is something I would like to share with my new friends on this board that have been nice to me from time.

AS ALWAYS PLEASE TREAT THIS AS A PERSONAL RANT, I AM NEITHER GIVING LEGAL ADVICE NOR TRYING TO EDUCATE ANYONE.