Amazon wins partial dismissal of US antitrust lawsuit

:Amazon.com Inc won a partial dismissal of a U.S. Federal Trade Commission lawsuit that accused it of maintaining illegal monopolies, although details of Monday’s ruling in federal court in Seattle were not immediately clear.

The FTC accused the online retailer of using anti-competitive tactics to maintain its dominance among online supermarkets and marketplaces. In December, Amazon asked U.S. District Judge John Chun to dismiss the case, saying the FTC had presented no evidence of harm to consumers.

Last year, the FTC alleged that Amazon.com, which has 1 billion items in its online supermarket, used an algorithm that raised the prices paid by American households by more than $1 billion. Amazon said in court documents that it stopped using the program in 2019.

Chun issued a sealed ruling, partially granting Amazon’s request. Court records show the FTC will still be able to pursue any claims that the judge did not definitively dismiss.

Chun also ruled that the case would be tried in two parts, denying Amazon’s request for the FTC to present evidence of alleged violations and proposed remedies in the same trial.

An FTC spokesman declined to comment on the order. An Amazon spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In its complaint last year, the FTC said Amazon hindered competition, in part by pressuring sellers to use its advertising and order fulfillment services. Amazon argued in its motion to dismiss the case that its price comparison and Prime shipping services benefit consumers and exemplify its efforts to compete with thousands of online and brick-and-mortar retailers. The case is one of five blockbuster lawsuits in which antitrust regulators the FTC and the U.S. Department of Justice are going after Big Tech. Facebook’s owner Meta Platforms and Apple have been sued, and Alphabet’s Google is facing two lawsuits, including one in which a judge recently found it had unlawfully thwarted competition among online search engines.

The Amazon.com case is an important one for FTC Chair Lina Khan, who has long pushed for a challenge to the power of the massive online retailer. In 2017, Khan wrote an influential academic article arguing that the company’s structure and practices raised anticompetitive concerns and had escaped antitrust scrutiny.