Amazon filed a motion in the Western District Court of Washington on Friday asking a judge to dismiss the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust lawsuit against it. The FTC and 17 state attorneys general , alleging that the company uses unfair monopolistic practices both towards its competitors and towards consumers. Amazon now argues that the FTC failed to provide evidence that its practices raised prices or harmed consumers, according to .
The FTC Lawsuit to crush its competition – such as punishing sellers who offer their products at better prices elsewhere by burying them in search results, and forcing sellers to use Amazon’s own fulfillment service by tying it to eligibility Prime. It also accuses Amazon of inflating prices from 2016 to 2018 using an algorithmic tool called Project Nessie. These increases total more than $1 billion, according to the suit.
In Amazon’s motion to dismiss, according to , Amazon said it only engages in “common retail practices” that “benefit consumers and are the essence of competition.” Amazon’s lawyer, Heidi Hubbard, wrote that the suit “implausibly and illogically assumes that Amazon’s efforts to keep prices low on Amazon have somehow raised prices to the consumption throughout the economy,” according to Bloomberg.
