UNITED STATES v. TOPCO ASSOCIATES

MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL delivered the opinion of the Court.

The United States brought this action for injunctive relief against alleged violation by Topco Associates, Inc. (Topco), of § 1 of the Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 1. Jurisdiction was grounded in § 4 of the Act, 15 U. S. C. § 4. Following a trial on the merits, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois entered judgment for Topco, 319 F.Supp. 1031, and the United States appealed directly to this Court pursuant to § 2 of the Expediting Act, 32 Stat. 823, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 29. We noted probable jurisdiction, 402 U.S. 905 (1971), and we now reverse the judgment of the District Court.

I

Topco is a cooperative association of approximately 25 small and medium-sized regional supermarket chains that operate stores in some 33 States.1 Each of the member chains operates independently; there is no pooling of earnings, profits, capital, management, or advertising resources. No grocery business is conducted under the Topco name. Its basic function is to serve as a purchasing agent for its members.2 In this capacity, it procures and distributes to the members more than 1,000 different food and related nonfood items, most of which are distributed under brand names owned by Topco. The association does not itself own any manufacturing, processing, or warehousing facilities, and the items that it procures for members are usually shipped directly from the packer or manufacturer to the members. Payment is made either to Topco or directly to the manufacturer at a cost that is virtually the same for the members as for Topco itself.

All of the stock in Topco is owned by the members, with the common stock, the only stock having voting rights, being equally distributed. The board of directors, which controls the operation of the association, is drawn from the members and is normally composed of high-ranking executive officers of member chains. It is the board that elects the association's officers and appoints committee members, and it is from the board that the principal executive officers of Topco must be drawn. Restrictions on the alienation of stock and the procedure for selecting all important officials of the association from within the ranks of its members give the members complete and unfettered control over the operations of the association.

Topco was founded in the 1940's by a group of small, local grocery chains, independently owned and operated, that desired to cooperate to obtain high quality merchandise under private labels in order to compete more effectively with larger national and regional chains.3 With a line of canned, dairy, and other products, the association began. It added frozen foods in 1950, fresh produce in 1958, more general merchandise equipment and supplies in 1960, and a branded bacon and carcass beef selection program in 1966. By 1964, Topco's members had combined retail sales of more than $2 billion; by 1967, their sales totaled more than $2.3 billion, a figure exceeded by only three national grocery chains.4

Members of the association vary in the degree of market share that they possess in their respective areas. The range is from 1.5% to 16%, with the average being approximately 6%. While it is difficult to compare these figures with the market shares of larger regional and national chains because of the absence in the record of accurate statistics for these chains, there is much evidence in the record that Topco members are frequently in as strong a competitive position in their respective areas as any other chain. The strength of this competitive position is due, in some measure, to the success of Topco-brand products. Although only 10% of the total goods sold by Topco members bear the association's brand names, the profit on these goods is substantial and their very existence has improved the competitive potential of Topco members with respect to other large and powerful chains.

It is apparent that from meager beginnings approximately a quarter of a century ago, Topco has developed into a purchasing association wholly owned and operated by member chains, which possess much economic muscle, individually as well as cooperatively.

II

Section 1 of the Sherman Act provides, in relevant part:

The United States charged that, beginning at least as early as 1960 and continuing up to the time that the complaint was filed, Topco had combined and conspired with its members to violate § 15 in two respects. First, the Government alleged that there existed:

The division of marketing territories to which the complaint refers consists of a number of practices by the association.

Article IX, § 2, of the Topco bylaws establishes three categories of territorial licenses that members may secure from the association:

When applying for membership, a chain must designate the type of license that it desires. Membership must first be approved by the board of directors, and thereafter by an affirmative vote of 75% of the association's members. If, however, the member whose operations are closest to those of the applicant, or any member whose operations are located within 100 miles of the applicant, votes against approval, an affirmative vote of 85% of the members is required for approval. Bylaws, Art. I, § 5. Because, as indicated by the record, members cooperate in accommodating each other's wishes, the procedure for approval provides, in essence, that members have a veto of sorts over actual or potential competition in the territorial areas in which they are concerned.

Following approval, each new member signs an agreement with Topco designating the territory in which that member may sell Topco-brand products. No member may sell these products outside the territory in which it is licensed. Most licenses are exclusive, and even those denominated "coextensive" or "non-exclusive" prove to be de facto exclusive. Exclusive territorial areas are often allocated to members who do no actual business in those areas on the theory that they may wish to expand at some indefinite future time and that expansion would likely be in the direction of the allocated territory. When combined with each member's veto power over new members, provisions for exclusivity work effectively to insulate members from competition in Topco-brand goods. Should a member violate its license agreement and sell in areas other than those in which it is licensed, its membership can be terminated under Art. IV, §§ 2 (a) and 2 (b) of the bylaws. Once a territory is classified as exclusive, either formally or de facto, it is extremely unlikely that the classification will ever be changed. See Bylaws, Art. IX.

The Government maintains that this scheme of dividing markets violates the Sherman Act because it operates to prohibit competition in Topco-brand products among grocery chains engaged in retail operations. The Government also makes a subsidiary challenge to Topco's practices regarding licensing members to sell at wholesale. Under the bylaws, members are not permitted to sell any products supplied by the association at wholesale, whether trademarked or not, without first applying for and receiving special permission from the association to do so.6 Before permission is granted, other licenses (usually retailers), whose interests may potentially be affected by wholesale operations, are consulted as to their wishes in the matter. If permission is obtained, the member must agree to restrict the sale of Topco products to a specific geographic area and to sell under any conditions imposed by the association. Permission to wholesale has often been sought by members, only to be denied by the association. The Government contends that this amounts not only to a territorial restriction violative of the Sherman Act, but also to a restriction on customers that in itself is violative of the Act.7

From the inception of this lawsuit, Topco accepted as true most of the Government's allegations regarding territorial divisions and restrictions on wholesaling, although it differed greatly with the Government on the conclusions, both factual and legal, to be drawn from these facts.

Topco's answer to the complaint is illustrative of its posture in the District Court and before this Court:

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Topco essentially maintains that it needs territorial divisions to compete with larger chains; that the association could not exist if the territorial divisions were anything but exclusive; and that by restricting competition in the sale of Topco-brand goods, the association actually increases competition by enabling its members to compete successfully with larger regional and national chains.

The District Court, considering all these things relevant to its decision, agreed with Topco. It recognized that the panoply of restraints that Topco imposed on its members worked to prevent competition in Topco-brand products,8 but concluded that

The court held that Topco's practices were procompetitive and, therefore, consistent with the purposes of the antitrust laws. But we conclude that the District Court used an improper analysis in reaching its result.

III

On its face, § 1 of the Sherman Act appears to bar any combination of entrepreneurs so long as it is "in restraint of trade." Theoretically, all manufacturers, distributors, merchants, sellers, and buyers could be considered as potential competitors of each other. Were § 1 to be read in the narrowest possible way, any commercial contract could be deemed to violate it. Chicago Board of Trade v. United States, 246 U.S. 231, 238 (1918) (Brandeis, J.). The history underlying the formulation of the antitrust laws led this Court to conclude, however, that Congress did not intend to prohibit all contracts, nor even all contracts that might in some insignificant degree or attenuated sense restrain trade or competition. In lieu of the narrowest possible reading of § 1, the Court adopted a "rule of reason" analysis for determining whether most business combinations or contracts violate the prohibitions of the Sherman Act. Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U.S. 1 (1911). An analysis of the reasonableness of particular restraints includes consideration of the facts peculiar to the business in which the restraint is applied, the nature of the restraint and its effects, and the history of the restraint and the reasons for its adoption. Chicago Board of Trade v. United States, supra, at 238.

While the Court has utilized the "rule of reason" in evaluating the legality of most restraints alleged to be violative of the Sherman Act, it has also developed the doctrine that certain business relationships are per se violations of the Act without regard to a consideration of their reasonableness. In Northern Pacific R. Co. v. United States, 356 U.S. 1, 5 (1958), Mr. Justice Black explained the appropriateness of, and the need for, per se rules:

It is only after considerable experience with certain business relationships that courts classify them as per se violations of the Sherman Act. See generally Van Cise, The Future of Per Se in Antitrust Law, 50 Va. L. Rev. 1165 (1964). One of the classic examples of a per se violation of § 1 is an agreement between competitors at the same level of the market structure to allocate territories in order to minimize competition. Such concerted action is usually termed a "horizontal" restraint, in contradistinction to combinations of persons at different levels of the market structure, e. g., manufacturers and distributors, which are termed "vertical" restraints. This Court has reiterated time and time again that "[h]orizontal territorial limitations . . . are naked restraints of trade with no purpose except stifling of competition." White Motor Co. v. United States, 372 U.S. 253, 263 (1963). Such limitations are per se violations of the Sherman Act. See Addyston Pipe & Steel Co. v. United States, 175 U.S. 211 (1899), aff'g 85 F. 271 (CA6 1898) (Taft, J.); United States v. National Lead Co., 332 U.S. 319 (1947); Timken Roller Bearing Co. v. United States, 341 U.S. 593 (1951); Northern Pacific R. Co. v. United States, supra; Citizen Publishing Co. v. United States, 394 U.S. 131 (1969); United States v. Sealy, Inc., 388 U.S. 350 (1967); United States v. Arnold, Schwinn & Co., 388 U.S. 365, 390 (1967) (STEWART, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); Serta Associates, Inc. v. United States, 393 U.S. 534 (1969), aff'g 296 F.Supp. 1121, 1128 (ND Ill. 1968).

We think that it is clear that the restraint in this case is a horizontal one, and, therefore, a per se violation of § 1. The District Court failed to make any determination as to whether there were per se horizontal territorial restraints in this case and simply applied a rule of reason in reaching its conclusions that the restraints were not illegal. See, e. g., Comment, Horizontal Territorial Restraints and the Per Se Rule, 28 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 457, 469 (1971). In so doing, the District Court erred.

United States v. Sealy, Inc., supra, is, in fact, on all fours with this case. Sealy licensed manufacturers of mattresses and bedding to make and sell products using the Sealy trademark. Like Topco, Sealy was a corporation owned almost entirely by its licensees, who elected the Board of Directors and controlled the business. Just as in this case, Sealy agreed with the licensees not to license other manufacturers or sellers to sell Sealy-brand products in a designated territory in exchange for the promise of the licensee who sold in that territory not to expand its sales beyond the area demarcated by Sealy. The Court held that this was a horizontal territorial restraint, which was per se violative of the Sherman Act.9

Whether or not we would decide this case the same way under the rule of reason used by the District Court is irrelevant to the issue before us. The fact is that courts are of limited utility in examining difficult economic problems.10 Our inability to weigh, in any meaningful sense, destruction of competition in one sector of the economy against promotion of competition in another sector is one important reason we have formulated per se rules.

In applying these rigid rules, the Court has consistently rejected the notion that naked restraints of trade are to be tolerated because they are well intended or because they are allegedly developed to increase competition. E. g., United States v. General Motors Corp., 384 U.S. 127, 146-147 (1966); United States v. Masonite Corp., 316 U.S. 265 (1942); Fashion Originators' Guild v. FTC, 312 U.S. 457 (1941).

Antitrust laws in general, and the Sherman Act in particular, are the Magna Carta of free enterprise. They are as important to the preservation of economic freedom and our free-enterprise system as the Bill of Rights is to the protection of our fundamental personal freedoms. And the freedom guaranteed each and every business, no matter how small, is the freedom to compete— to assert with vigor, imagination, devotion, and ingenuity whatever economic muscle it can muster. Implicit in such freedom is the notion that it cannot be foreclosed with respect to one sector of the economy because certain private citizens or groups believe that such foreclosure might promote greater competition in a more important sector of the economy. Cf. United States v. Philadelphia National Bank, 374 U.S. 321, 371 (1963).

The District Court determined that by limiting the freedom of its individual members to compete with each other, Topco was doing a greater good by fostering competition between members and other large supermarket chains. But, the fallacy in this is that Topco has no authority under the Sherman Act to determine the respective values of competition in various sectors of the economy. On the contrary, the Sherman Act gives to each Topco member and to each prospective member the right to ascertain for itself whether or not competition with other supermarket chains is more desirable than competition in the sale of Topco-brand products. Without territorial restrictions, Topco members may indeed "[cut] each other's throats." Cf. White Motor Co., supra, at 278 (Clark, J., dissenting). But, we have never found this possibility sufficient to warrant condoning horizontal restraints of trade.

The Court has previously noted with respect to price fixing, another per se violation of the Sherman Act, that:

A similar observation can be made with regard to territorial limitations. White Motor Co., supra, at 265 n. 2 (BRENNAN, J., concurring).

There have been tremendous departures from the notion of a free-enterprise system as it was originally conceived in this country. These departures have been the product of congressional action and the will of the people. If a decision is to be made to sacrifice competition in one portion of the economy for greater competition in another portion, this too is a decision that must be made by Congress and not by private forces or by the courts. Private forces are too keenly aware of their own interests in making such decisions and courts are ill-equipped and ill-situated for such decisionmaking. To analyze, interpret, and evaluate the myriad of competing interests and the endless data that would surely be brought to bear on such decisions, and to make the delicate judgment on the relative values to society of competitive areas of the economy, the judgment of the elected representatives of the people is required.

Just as the territorial restrictions on retailing Topco-brand products must fall, so must the territorial restrictions on wholesaling. The considerations are the same, and the Sherman Act requires identical results.

We also strike down Topco's other restrictions on the right of its members to wholesale goods. These restrictions amount to regulation of the customers to whom members of Topco may sell Topco-brand goods. Like territorial restrictions, limitations on customers are intended to limit intra-brand competition and to promote inter-brand competition. For the reasons previously discussed, the arena in which Topco members compete must be left to their unfettered choice absent a contrary congressional determination. United States v. General Motors Corp., supra; cf. United States v. Arnold, Schwinn & Co., supra; United States v. Masonite Corp., supra; United States v. Trenton Potteries, supra. See also, White Motor Co., supra, at 281-283 (Clark, J., dissenting).

We reverse the judgment of the District Court and remand the case for entry of an appropriate decree.

It is so ordered.

MR. JUSTICE POWELL and MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, concurring in the result.

The conclusion the Court reaches has its anomalous aspects, for surely, as the District Court's findings make clear, today's decision in the Government's favor will tend to stultify Topco members' competition with the great and larger chains. The bigs, therefore, should find it easier to get bigger and, as a consequence, reality seems at odds with the public interest. The per se rule, however, now appears to be so firmly established by the Court that, at this late date, I could not oppose it. Relief, if any is to be forthcoming, apparently must be by way of legislation.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER, dissenting.

This case does not involve restraints on interbrand competition or an allocation of markets by an association with monopoly or near-monopoly control of the sources of supply of one or more varieties of staple goods. Rather, we have here an agreement among several small grocery chains to join in a cooperative endeavor that, in my view, has an unquestionably lawful principal purpose; in pursuit of that purpose they have mutually agreed to certain minimal ancillary restraints that are fully reasonable in view of the principal purpose and that have never before today been held by this Court to be per se violations of the Sherman Act.

In joining in this cooperative endeavor, these small chains did not agree to the restraints here at issue in order to make it possible for them to exploit an already established line of products through noncompetitive pricing. There was no such thing as a Topco line of products until this cooperative was formed. The restraints to which the cooperative's members have agreed deal only with the marketing of the products in the Topco line, and the only function of those restraints is to permit each member chain to establish, within its own geographical area and through its own local advertising and marketing efforts, a local consumer awareness of the trademarked family of products as that member's "private label" line. The goal sought was the enhancement of the individual members' abilities to compete, albeit to a modest degree, with the large national chains which had been successfully marketing private-label lines for several years. The sole reason for a cooperative endeavor was to make economically feasible such things as quality control, large quantity purchases at bulk prices, the development of attractively printed labels, and the ability to offer a number of different lines of trademarked products. All these things, of course, are feasible for the large national chains operating individually, but they are beyond the reach of the small operators proceeding alone.1

After a careful review of the economic considerations bearing upon this case, the District Court determined that "the relief which the government here seeks would not increase competition in Topco private label brands"; on the contrary, such relief "would substantially diminish competition in the supermarket field." 319 F.Supp. 1031, 1043. This Court has not today determined, on the basis of an examination of the underlying economic realities, that the District Court's conclusions are incorrect. Rather, the majority holds that the District Court had no business examining Topco's practices under the "rule of reason"; it should not have sought to determine whether Topco's practices did in fact restrain trade or commerce within the meaning of § 1 of the Sherman Act; it should have found no more than that those practices involve a "horizontal division of markets" and are, by that very fact, per se violations of the Act.

I do not believe that our prior decisions justify the result reached by the majority. Nor do I believe that a new per se rule should be established in disposing of this case, for the judicial convenience and ready predictability that are made possible by per se rules are not such overriding considerations in antitrust law as to justify their promulgation without careful prior consideration of the relevant economic realities in the light of the basic policy and goals of the Sherman Act.

I

I deal first with the cases upon which the majority relies in stating that "[t]his Court has reiterated time and time again that `[h]orizontal territorial limitations . . . are naked restraints of trade with no purpose except stifling of competition.' White Motor Co. v. United States, 372 U.S. 253, 263 (1963)." White Motor, of course, laid down no per se rule; nor were any horizontal territorial limitations involved in that case. Indeed, it was in White Motor that this Court reversed the District Court's holding that vertically imposed territorial limitations were per se violations, explaining that "[w]e need to know more than we do about the actual impact of these arrangements on competition to decide whether they . . . should be classified as per se violations of the Sherman Act." 372 U. S., at 263. The statement from the White Motor opinion quoted by the majority today was made without citation of authority and was apparently intended primarily to make clear that the facts then before the Court were not to be confused with horizontally imposed territorial limitations. To treat dictum in that case as controlling here would, of course, be unjustified.

Having quoted this dictum from White Motor, the Court then cites eight cases for the proposition that horizontal territorial limitations are per se violations of the Sherman Act. One of these cases, Northern Pacific R. Co. v. United States, 356 U.S. 1 (1958), dealt exclusively with a prohibited tying arrangement and is improperly cited as a case concerned with a division of markets.2 Of the remaining seven cases, four involved an aggregation of trade restraints that included price-fixing agreements. Timken Roller Bearing Co. v. United States, 341 U.S. 593 (1951); United States v. Sealy, Inc., 388 U.S. 350 (1967);3 Serta Associates, Inc. v. United States, 393 U.S. 534 (1969), aff'g 296 F.Supp. 1121 (ND Ill. 1968). Price fixing is, of course, not a factor in the instant case.

Another of the cases relied upon by the Court, United States v. National Lead Co., 332 U.S. 319 (1947), involved a world-wide arrangement4 for dividing territories, pooling patents, and exchanging technological information. The arrangement was found illegal by the District Court without any reliance on a per se rule;5 this Court, in affirming, was concerned almost exclusively with the remedies ordered by the District Court and made no attempt to declare a per se rule to govern the merits of the case.

In still another case on which the majority relies, United States v. Arnold, Schwinn & Co., 388 U.S. 365 (1967), the District Court had, indeed, held that the agreements between the manufacturer and certain of its distributors, providing the latter with exclusive territories, were horizontal in nature and that they were, as such, per se violations of the Act. 237 F.Supp. 323, 342-343. Since no appeal was taken from this part of the District Court's order,6 that issue was not before this Court in its review of the case. Indeed, in dealing with the issues that were before it, this Court followed an approach markedly different from that of the District Court. First, in reviewing the case here, the Court made it clear that it was proceeding under the "rule of reason," and not by per se rule;7 second, the Court saw the issues presented as involving vertical, not horizontal, restraints.8 It can hardly be contended, therefore, that this Court's decision in Schwinn is controlling precedent for the application in the instant case of a per se rule that prohibits horizontal restraints without regard to their market effects.

Finally, there remains the eighth of the cases relied upon by the Court—actually, the first in its list of "authorities" for the purported per se rule. Circuit Judge (later Chief Justice) Taft's opinion for the court in United States v. Addyston Pipe & Steel Co., 85 F. 271 (CA6 1898), aff'd, 175 U.S. 211 (1899), has generally been recognized—and properly so—as a fully authoritative exposition of antitrust law. But neither he, nor this Court in affirming, made any pretense of establishing a per se rule against all agreements involving horizontal territorial limitations. The defendants in that case were manufacturers and vendors of cast-iron pipe who had "entered into a combination to raise the prices for pipe" throughout a number of States "constituting considerably more than three-quarters of the territory of the United States, and significantly called . . . `pay territory.' " 85 F., at 291. The associated defendants in combination controlled two-thirds of the manufactured output of such pipe in this "pay territory"; certain cities ("reserved" cities) within the territory were assigned to particular individual defendants who sold pipe in those cities at prices fixed by the association, the other defendants submitting fictitious bids and the selling defendants paying a fixed "bonus" to the association for each sale. Outside the "reserved" cities, all sales by the defendants to customers in the "pay territory" were, again, at prices determined by the association and were allocated to the association member who offered, in a secret auction, to pay the largest "bonus" to the association itself. The effect was, of course, that the buying public lost all benefit of competitive pricing. Although the case has frequently—and quite properly— been cited as a horizontal allocation-of-markets case, the sole purpose of the secret customer allocations was to enable the members of the association to fix prices charged to the public at noncompetitive levels. Judge Taft rejected the defendants' argument that the prices actually charged were "reasonable"; he held that it was sufficient for a finding of a Sherman Act violation that the combination and agreement of the defendants gave them such monopoly power that they, rather than market forces, fixed the prices of all cast-iron pipe in three-fourths of the Nation's territory. The case unquestionably laid important groundwork for the subsequent establishment of the per se rule against price fixing. It did not, however, establish that a horizontal division of markets is, without more, a per se violation of the Sherman Act.

II

The foregoing analysis of the cases relied upon by the majority indicates to me that the Court is not merely following prior holdings; on the contrary, it is establishing a new per se rule. In the face of the District Court's well supported findings that the effects of such a rule in this case will be adverse to the public welfare,9 the Court lays down that rule without regard to the impact that the condemned practices may have on competition. In doing so, the Court virtually invites Congress to undertake to determine that impact. Ante, at 611-612. I question whether the Court is fulfilling the role assigned to it under the statute when it declines to make this determination; in any event, if the Court is unwilling on this record to assess the economic impact, it surely should not proceed to make a new rule to govern the economic activity. White Motor Co. v. United States, 372 U. S., at 263.

When one of his versions of the proposed Act was before the Senate for consideration in 1890, Senator Sherman, in a lengthy, and obviously carefully prepared, address to that body, said that the bill sought

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In "carry[ing] out the meaning of the law" by making its "determin[ations] in each particular case," this Court early concluded that it was Congress' intent that a "rule of reason" be applied in making such case-by-case determinations. Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U.S. 1, 60 (1911). And that rule of reason was to be applied in light of the Act's policy to protect the "public interests." United States v. American Tobacco Co., 221 U.S. 106, 179 (1911). The per se rules that have been developed are similarly directed to the protection of the public welfare; they are complementary to, and in no way inconsistent with, the rule of reason. The principal advantages that flow from their use are, first, that enforcement and predictability are enhanced and, second, that unnecessary judicial investigation is avoided in those cases where practices falling within the scope of such rules are found. As the Court explained in Northern Pacific R. Co. v. United States, supra, at 5,

In formulating a new per se rule today, the Court does not tell us what "pernicious effect on competition" the practices here outlawed are perceived to have; nor does it attempt to show that those practices "lack . . . any redeeming virtue." Rather, it emphasizes only the importance of predictability, asserting that "courts are of limited utility in examining difficult economic problems" and have not yet been left free by Congress to "ramble through the wilds of economic theory in order to maintain a flexible approach."10

With all respect, I believe that there are two basic fallacies in the Court's approach here. First, while I would not characterize our role under the Sherman Act as one of "rambl[ing] through the wilds," it is indeed one that requires our "examin[ation of] difficult economic problems." We can undoubtedly ease our task, but we should not abdicate that role by formulation of per se rules with no justification other than the enhancement of predictability and the reduction of judicial investigation. Second, from the general proposition that per se rules play a necessary role in antitrust law, it does not follow that the particular per se rule promulgated today is an appropriate one. Although it might well be desirable in a proper case for this Court to formulate a per se rule dealing with horizontal territorial limitations, it would not necessarily be appropriate for such a rule to amount to a blanket prohibition against all such limitations. More specifically, it is far from clear to me why such a rule should cover those division-of-market agreements that involve no price fixing and which are concerned only with trademarked products that are not in a monopoly or near-monopoly position with respect to competing brands. The instant case presents such an agreement; I would not decide it upon the basis of a per se rule.11

The District Court specifically found that the horizontal restraints involved here tend positively to promote competition in the supermarket field and to produce lower costs for the consumer. The Court seems implicitly to accept this determination, but says that the Sherman Act does not give Topco the authority to determine for itself "whether or not competition with other supermarket chains is more desirable than competition in the sale of Topco-brand products." Ante, at 611. But the majority overlooks a further specific determination of the District Court, namely, that the invalidation of the restraints here at issue "would not increase competition in Topco private label brands." 319 F. Supp., at 1043. Indeed, the District Court seemed to believe that it would, on the contrary, lead to the likely demise of those brands in time. And the evidence before the District Court would appear to justify that conclusion.

There is no national demand for Topco brands, nor has there ever been any national advertising of those brands. It would be impracticable for Topco, with its limited financial resources, to convert itself into a national brand distributor in competition with distributors of existing national brands. Furthermore, without the right to grant exclusive licenses, it could not attract and hold new members as replacements for those of its present members who, following the pattern of the past, eventually grow sufficiently in size to be able to leave the cooperative organization and develop their own individual private-label brands. Moreover, Topco's present members, once today's decision has had its full impact over the course of time, will have no more reason to promote Topco products through local advertising and merchandising efforts than they will have such reason to promote any other generally available brands.

The issues presented by the antitrust cases reaching this Court are rarely simple to resolve under the rule of reason; they do indeed frequently require us to make difficult economic determinations. We should not for that reason alone, however, be overly zealous in formulating new per se rules, for an excess of zeal in that regard is both contrary to the policy of the Sherman Act and detrimental to the welfare of consumers generally. Indeed, the economic effect of the new rule laid down by the Court today seems clear: unless Congress intervenes, grocery staples marketed under private-label brands with their lower consumer prices will soon be available only to those who patronize the large national chains.