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by sbuk 5159 days ago
"It might be trivial, but it's trivially true." It's trivial to the point of not being relevant. If the justice system were to punish every manufacturer that had a monopoly over their own product then nothing would get made. Cogent isn't perhaps the right word. As statements go "$megaCorp has a monopoly over their own products" is meaningless, yet it is constantly cited in these discussions as reason to pursue damages.
1 comments

Look, there are several issues here. There's a narrow semantic point. On that point (which I think you explicitly denied), you can have monopolies over market segments. Personally, I like semantics, and think semantics is often less trivial then people suppose, but I accept others may be less interested.

Then there's a legal point about whether one opens oneself to legal action for dominance when operating in certain ways over market segments - I think it's also true you can be. But I'm not that advanced in my legal training, so don't take a strong position on that.

Further, there are normative and moral issues about what should be the law, and what one should do in these cases - but discussing those would take a long time...