The Restrictive Trade Practices Court And The Net Book Agreement
| Author | George W. Liebmann,B. S. Yamey |
| Published date | 01 September 1965 |
| Date | 01 September 1965 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1965.tb02905.x |
THE RESTRICTIVE TRADE PRACTICES
COURT AND THE NET
BOOK
AGREEMENT
PERHAPS
one who has some experience of conditions in the American
book trade may be allowed to make reply to the predictable attacks
that have been levelled at the eloquent and civilised judgment of
the Restrictive Trade Practices Court in the
Net
Book
Agreement
case,' including that by Professor Basil Yamey in the November
lllodern
Law
Review.2
That these attacks have been forthcoming
will surprise no one familiar with the intellectual history of that
agreement and its
antecedent^.^
Those who continue to attempt to
find in a particular economic theory the automatic solution to all
human problems may be pardoned this renewed attempt to vindicate
the views of Lord Campbell, of Spencer, of Cobden and of Mill
(though not those of Lord Coleridge, of Scott, of Ruskin and of
Marshall).
Professor Yamey heavily criticised the court's stress in its judg-
ment on the testimony of a Canadian bookseller relating to
conditions in the book trade of that co~ntry.~ Much is made of the
failure of the small and scattered Canadian book trade to make
effective representations to a government committee set up to
examine resale price maintenance in
1960.
Since most books sold
in Canada are imported works subject to highly variable shipping
costs,
it
may be doubted that the legality
of
vertical resale price
maintenance as such is of much concern to a Canadian bookseller.
It
is safe to suggest that in Canada, as in New Zealand,J price
maintenance may be sustained in the book trade only by means of
some form of horizontal arrangement. The testimony of the
Canadian bookseller goes to illustrate the effects on stockholding
booksellers where unrestrained competition develops, from whatever
cause; its authority is not vitiated by the political sins of omission
of Canadian booksellers. Nor do crude statistics relating to the
total sales and imports of books (including textbooks, technical
works and softcover reprints) shed much light on the health of those
portions of the trade concerned with the issuance and sale of new
works in the humanities: the segment of the trade whose welfare
the Restrictive Practices Court seems properly to have deemed of
1
Re Net Book Agreement,
1957
[1962]
L.R.
3
R.P.
246.
2
(1963) 26
M.L.R.
691.
3
See hfacmillan,
The Net Book Agreement,
1924;
Barnes,
Free Trade in Books,
1964;
Mumby,
Publishing and Books$Zing
(4th
ed.
1961);
Yamey,
"
Trade
Combinations:
A
Historical Footnote
(1954)
17
M.L.R.
139;
Tosdal,
Price
Maintenance in the Book Trade
(1915)
30
Quart.J.Econ.
86;
and the authorities
cited
in
these works.
(1963) 26
M.L.R.
695-697.
5
See
Re Associated Booksellers
of
New Zealand
[1962]
N.Z.L.R.
1057.
551
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