Monopolization

It has a specific legal meaning, which is parallel to the "abuse" of a dominant position in EU competition law, under TFEU article 102.

Generally this means that corporations may not act in ways that have been identified as contrary to precedent cases.

For several decades courts drew the line between efficient and inefficient exclusion by asking whether the conduct under scrutiny was "competition on the merits".

Courts equated such competition on the merits with unilateral conduct such as product improvement, the realization of economies of scale, innovation, and the like.

Such conduct was lawful per se, since it constituted the normal operation of economic forces that a free economy should encourage.

[1] This distinction reflected the economic theory of the time, which saw no beneficial purposes for what Professor Oliver Williamson has called non-standard contracts.

For instance, non-standard contracts that exclude rivals are now lawful if supported by a "valid business reason", unless the plaintiff can establish that the defendant could achieve the same benefits by means of a less restrictive alternative.

The typical predatory and exclusionary acts include things such as excessive purchase and supply, pricing, refusal to deal.