After filing the Complaint, Plaintiffs have 60 days to serve Hermes. I don't know if proof of service has been filed with the court, so I don't know if that's been done. Hermes has 30 days to file either an answer ("none of this is true") or demurrer ("there aren't enough facts regardless to claim this is an anti-trust violation" or, "this is the incorrect jurisdiction"). From here the timeline is dependent on who's filing what, which depends on the cards laid out by both parties. It could be years before this reaches trial, assuming it doesn't get dismissed well before then.
And
@skyvue I think you're right to point out that the biggest hurdle will be about proving harm to consumers and competition. But I do think there's a (more convincingly hypothetical than legal) argument to be made that consumers are harmed because of alleged tying. If the price of Birkins have only increased because of this practice, then is the across-the-board price increases of handbags in the luxury space something that would have happened, had Hermes
not allegedly tied its products? Because that
does affect the consumer. We know Chanel did this. Yet while Chanel may have benefitted in their handbag line, their other products may be negatively affected. Same with any other brand in the luxury space. For ex, a consumer may forgo buying a Loro Piana/Chanel/Brunello sweater (thus hurting their sales) because a consumer chose instead to buy from Hermes. Not because she thinks it's a better sweater than what she finds at her favorites, but because it comes with the benefit of bringing her closer to a bag offer.
Plus there's the issue of the effect on smaller businesses. Doesn't have to be fashion. Let's take homeware. Imagine you have just started a luxury furniture shop. The ONLY clients who can afford them are the same small pool of customers who can afford to buy a $30k couch from Hermes, because you make $30k couches, too. Your margins are very slim because you've just started, you've got high overheads and you use expensive, regulatory-heavy inputs like some not-yet-banned-but-close rosewood. You even set up your store in the same affluent neighborhood as Hermes! Your sofa develops a cult following in the luxury community. Hermes sees this, and they want your market share. Or maybe they don't know of your existence or care. Maybe it's just really unfortunate timing, but Hermes has decided to make inroads into the furniture market and they want to compete with Roche Bobois. They want clients buying
their 30k sofa. So you know what they do? Offer special orders/limited edition/exclusive wishlist bags to clients who buy a sofa [just as I think IRL
they offered SOs for their
watch push]. H knows it doesn't have to sell
any sofas to stay in business... but you NEED to sell at least 3 a month. You being a small business can no longer compete--those same clients who liked your sofa just as much, or maybe even a little bit more, now have bought H's couch because they
really want that bag, and liked the H couch well enough. And the competition wasn't based on Hermes designing or building a better sofa than you, it wasn't based on fair pricing, or anything resembling fair competition in a transparent market. It's because they made a product consumers really want (a bag), contingent on the sale of another. Would you want to be that small business?
As Hermes said in the watch article, "Of course, the brand’s greatest point of difference is its reputation and its enviable position of already having a high-net-worth clientele that flock to the maison in search of the very best. “We have an extreme asset; we know our customer. We can talk directly to our customers.” Yeah, it sure does have another "extreme asset" for those "in search of the very best": its Bs and Ks.
