Antitrust Standards in Franchisor/Franchisee Electronic Marketplaces

F. Martin Dajani, Of Counsel in the Washington, D.C., office of Piper Rudnick LLP.

4/24/2008
(Original Publish Date: 4/2/2002)

Although there are several acceptable definitions of electronic business-to-business marketplaces (B2Bs or exchanges), for purposes of this article, B2Bs are Internetbased electronic markets designed to allow businesses, and not individual consumers, to transact business and communicate with each other via a website or portal. These businesses may operate in manufacturing, service, and other sectors, and include suppliers, vendors, distributors, and business customers. By limiting the definition to Internetbased electronic markets, this article intentionally excludes exchanges that use proprietary electronic networks, such as electronic data interchange (EDI) systems and other non- Internet platforms. Although a robust EDI system can perform some of the functions of a B2B marketplace, few EDI systems have approached the functionality and economic scale necessary to seriously implicate many of the antitrust issues associated with B2B exchanges.