Clarity Starts To Form Regarding Pricing Algorithm Antitrust Cases

When do companies using the same pricing algorithm violate the antitrust law? Despite the new technology, the answer seems to center on the classic issue central to a hub-and-spoke conspiracy: is there an agreement along the rim?

In Gibson v. Cendyn Group, LLC, class plaintiffs accuse Las Vegas hotels of fixing prices via a subscription software program provided by Cendyn Group. This software suggests prices for hotel rooms and conference rooms via algorithm, relying in part on publicly-available competitor pricing data scraped from the web. The accusation was that this created a hub-and-spoke conspiracy, with Cendyn as the hub, the hotels as the spokes, and the agreement among the hotels being evidenced by the hotels' subscribing to and renewing their subscriptions to Cendyn's services