• by Wendy Davis , October 2, 2024

Amazon must face antitrust charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission, a federal judge ruled this week.

The decision, issued by U.S. District Court Judge John Chun in Seattle, dismissed some of the claims in the case, but allowed other claims to proceed.

Chun filed the opinion under seal, and it's not yet clear which of the claims were thrown out. The ruling allows government officials to attempt to reformulate the dismissed claims and bring them again.

Amazon declined to comment on the ruling.

Chun's order comes in a lawsuit dating to September 2023, when the FTC and a coalition of states alleged that Amazon wrongly prevents marketplace sellers from discounting their products on other sites, and requires sellers to use Amazon's fulfillment system in order to participate in Amazon Prime, which offers expedited shipping. 

That "interconnected strategy" aims to “block off every major avenue of competition -- including price, product selection, quality, and innovation -- in the relevant markets for online superstores and online marketplace services,” the complaint alleged. Online superstores are described in the complaint as stores offering "a single destination for shoppers to browse a large and diverse selection of goods from multiple brands across a wide range of categories.”

Amazon had asked Chun to dismiss the complaint, arguing that the allegations, even if proven true, wouldn't support a conclusion that the company violated antitrust laws.

“The complaint does not identify a single product or product category for which prices have risen as a result of the challenged conduct,” Amazon wrote in a December filing. “Instead, it implausibly, and illogically, assumes that Amazon’s efforts to keep featured prices low on Amazon somehow raised consumer prices across the whole economy.”

The company also said allegations that it requires Prime sellers to use Amazon's fulfillment don't support antitrust charges, arguing that complaint doesn't “identify a single supposedly 'foreclosed' rival.”

The claim that Amazon attempts to prevent retailers from offering discounts on other platforms has surfaced in other antitrust cases against the company -- including ones by attorneys general in California and Washington, D.C. 

A trial judge dismissed the Washington, D.C. lawsuit, but an appellate court reinstated that case in August.