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Don't really understand how this is anti-trust behavior. Is a company not allowed to choose whom it's selling its products to?

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Generally, no. Usually the right of first sale ensures anyone can buy a product, if not from the original manufacturer, than from a reseller. Extremely tight distribution chains designed to prevent a competitor from getting a hold of your product is pretty darn rare. And when it's a monopoly that's already repeatedly demonstrated monopolist behavior, it's even less permissible. So they have a patent monopoly on the hardware, already shown they'll fight in court to protect it (re: Uber), and will prevent anyone from buying that hardware if it's a potential competitor to their service-based business. Their choice to sell the hardware makes it a separate market than their ride-sharing service, and one could argue a violation of antitrust law if they're blocking competitors from one market from buying their product in another.
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  There's no such thing as a "patent monopoly", and there are multiple competitors in this space (4? mentioned in the article). The idea that there's a meaningful monopoly here is strange, to say the least. Unless you're actually trying to argue that "warehouse lidar produced by Google" is a meaningfully different market than "warehouse lidar", which completely contravenes both written law and precedent. Also the right of first sale is trademark/copyright law, not contract law. Companies are absolutely allowed to create non-trademark agreements, and they do all the time. Think software licenses.
  - UncleEntity 8y ago
    > Also the right of first sale is trademark/copyright law, not contract law. And apparently patent law, you can't use your patents to force someone who legally acquired a device to not do something with it. So, if one legally got their hands on one of these things there's not a thing waymo could do to them if they were "misusing" it.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

Generally, no. Usually the right of first sale ensures anyone can buy a product, if not from the original manufacturer, than from a reseller. Extremely tight distribution chains designed to prevent a competitor from getting a hold of your product is pretty darn rare. And when it's a monopoly that's already repeatedly demonstrated monopolist behavior, it's even less permissible. So they have a patent monopoly on the hardware, already shown they'll fight in court to protect it (re: Uber), and will prevent anyone from buying that hardware if it's a potential competitor to their service-based business. Their choice to sell the hardware makes it a separate market than their ride-sharing service, and one could argue a violation of antitrust law if they're blocking competitors from one market from buying their product in another.

joshuamorton 8y ago
There's no such thing as a "patent monopoly", and there are multiple competitors in this space (4? mentioned in the article). The idea that there's a meaningful monopoly here is strange, to say the least. Unless you're actually trying to argue that "warehouse lidar produced by Google" is a meaningfully different market than "warehouse lidar", which completely contravenes both written law and precedent. Also the right of first sale is trademark/copyright law, not contract law. Companies are absolutely allowed to create non-trademark agreements, and they do all the time. Think software licenses.
- UncleEntity 8y ago
  > Also the right of first sale is trademark/copyright law, not contract law. And apparently patent law, you can't use your patents to force someone who legally acquired a device to not do something with it. So, if one legally got their hands on one of these things there's not a thing waymo could do to them if they were "misusing" it.