Opinion ID: 3010431
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: We thus turn to the question whether B&P adduced

Text: sufficient evidence to permit a reasonable factfinder to _________________________________________________________________ 4. The antitrust injury requirement in the context of antitrust standing can thus be seen as analogous to the constitutional minimum required for standing to sue in federal court in general, and the other AGC factors may be thought of as prudential limits on standing that are particularly necessary or appropriate in the antitrust context. Cf. Florida Seed Co., Inc. v. Monsanto Co., 105 F.3d 1372, 1374 (11th Cir. 1997). 7 conclude that it competed in the market in which trade was allegedly restrained, such that its alleged injury would constitute antitrust injury.5 The answer to this question depends on how that market is defined. B&P's complaint defined the relevant market as all hepatitis-B vaccine sold to nursing homes in the United States. (App. 25) (emphasis added). It alleged that the unlawful conspiracy aimed to eliminate B&P as a competitor in the distribution of hepatitis B vaccine to nursing homes . . . . (App. 25) (emphasis added). Because it is undisputed that B&P never sold or distributed or sought to sell or distribute any vaccine to anyone, however, it is plain that B&P was not a competitor in the market for sales of the vaccine. In its briefs and at oral argument, B&P espoused a slightly different view of the relevant market and its role therein. B&P argues that the evidence demonstrates that Barton & Pittinos and its program competed with and displaced the pharmacists. Appellant's Br. at 15. In our view, the key words in this quoted statement are and its program. B&P is surely correct in its assertion that the program whereby B&P marketed the vaccine and GIV filled the orders solicited by B&P competed with the pharmacists. The SKB/GIV/B&P program, taken as a whole, offered a package of marketing and distribution of the vaccine -- a package that was equivalent to the package offered by the consultant pharmacists. We agree with B&P that the pharmacists' efforts to kill the SKB/GIV/B&P program show that they viewed it as competition. And we agree with B&P that the nursing homes' eagerness to abandon the pharmacists in favor of the SKB/GIV/B&P program shows that the package of goods and services offered by the SKB/GIV/B&P program was reasonably interchangeable with the package of goods and services offered by the pharmacists. See, e.g., Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U.S. 294, 325 (1962) (The outer boundaries of a product market are determined by the reasonable interchangeability of use or the cross-elasticity of demand between the product itself and substitutes for it.). But the question presented in this appeal is whether B&P _________________________________________________________________ 5. B&P does not contend that it was a consumer in the relevant market. 8 was in competition with the pharmacists, not whether the program was. In order to hold that B&P was in competition with the pharmacists, we would have to conclude that what B&P offered was reasonably interchangeable with what the pharmacists offered. We agree with the district court that the record cannot support such a determination. B&P's role in the program was limited to marketing the vaccine; without GIV, there was no vaccine, only information about it. Thus, the nursing homes (the consumers in the relevant market here) were able to abandon the pharmacists in favor of the SKB/GIV/B&P program, but they could not have abandoned the pharmacists in favor of B&P alone. Doing so would have left the pharmacists without the most important part of the package of goods and services offered by SKB, GIV, and B&P together: the vaccine itself. Consequently, there was no cross-elasticity of demand as between the pharmacists' offerings and B&P's offerings; no matter how much the pharmacists raised the price of the package of the goods and services that they offered, the nursing homes could not have switched to B&P.6