The federal and state governments are asking the US District Court for the Western District of Washington to stop Amazon from engaging in these allegedly anticompetitive behaviors and restructure their business to avoid such behavior in the future. The complaint claims that Amazon’s monopoly has been maintained through anticompetitive, exclusionary practices in violation of state and federal law. The complaint alleges that Amazon has engaged in anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct to maintain its monopoly power, which is a violation of federal and state law. According to the complaint, these practices are in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act as well as the Sherman Act. Additionally, the complaint contains multiple state anticompetitive law violations for most of the states involved in the litigation.
The complaint also asserts that Amazon’s “Project Nessie” is a part of its scheme to maintain its monopoly status. The complaint has redacted much of the information that would be available to the public about this project. The complaint asks that the court declares that Amazon violated the laws mentioned above. It also demands that Amazon is permanently prohibited from engaging in similar conduct or the same unlawful conduct, with the same purpose or effect. The complaint outlines detailed allegations that Amazon has been using its monopoly to enrich itself, while increasing prices and degrading services for the hundreds of thousands businesses and tens and millions of American families shopping on Amazon’s platform. Today’s lawsuit seeks to hold Amazon to account for these monopolistic practices and restore the lost promise of free and fair competition.
The announcement comes amid another major antitrust lawsuit led by the US federal government against Google. The US Department of Justice claims, similar to the claims made by the US government against Amazon that Google has monopolized “multiple advertising technology products”, in violation of Sections 1, 2 and 3 of the Sherman Act. The court heard opening arguments in the case against Google on September 12,
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