Re:Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between vi...
by ethbro on Thursday January 26, 2017 @05:21PM
(#13495816)
True, but prosecution at the levels we're talking about is as much a political exercise as a legal one.
Wikipedia's background is weak, but Northern Securities Co. v. United States in 1903 [1], one of the first major anti-trust prosecutions, was equally novel by the fact that the US government was choosing to prosecute it at all.
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890) had been on the books for better than a decade. Under a unified government, applicability is rarely as much of a question as enforcement.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Securities_Co._v._U...
It's not so easy to apply to a law written in terms of concepts like "two employees of the same company", because "company" is itself something that only exists as a legal construct and "employee" already has a specific legal meaning that's significantly different from its common-sense one.