Online Retailer 1-800 Contacts Hit with Another Antitrust Lawsuit

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1-800 Contacts, one of the biggest retailers for contact lenses sold online, is the defendant in another antitrust lawsuit, this time in Arkansas. The complaint claims the retailer entered into “bidding agreements” with 14 other competitors beginning in 2004 or earlier. The suit says these agreements were designed to limit competition in the online market for direct-to-consumer sales by restricting the display of competitors’ advertisements when consumers enter “1-800 Contacts” or similar terms into a search engine. 1-800 Contacts allegedly claimed the other online retailers were infringing on its trademark and bullied them into signing the agreements by threatening them with litigation, the complaint says. The plaintiff now argues that 1-800 Contacts has artificially inflated online contact prices and misled consumers by limiting their choices. Allegedly, 1-800 Contacts and the fourteen sellers that entered into the bidding agreements share 80 percent of the market for online contact sales, and 1-800 Contacts itself maintains about 50 percent of that number, the complaint claims. Citing alleged violations of the Sherman Act and the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, this proposed class action is the newest in the list of antitrust lawsuits filed against 1-800 Contacts.