Groups including the Consumers Union, the Consumer Federation of America, the American Antitrust Institute, and Public Knowledge have joined with some equipment makers to challenge the rules.

After working for many years as a jeweler, he founded the American Antitrust Institute, a nonprofit policy institute that he runs out of his home.

"There has to be a meeting of the minds, a conscious commitment to a common scheme," said Robert H. Lande, a senior research scholar at the American Antitrust Institute.

American Antitrust Institute.

Richard M. Brunell argued the cause and filed a brief as amicus curiae for the American Antitrust Institute.

Parker C. Folse III filed a brief for the American Antitrust Institute as amicus curiae urging affirmance.

"It sounds like the normal give-and-take in the market," said Robert Lande, a professor at the University of Baltimore Law School and a director of the American Antitrust Institute.

Subsequently the American Antitrust Institute wrote to the FTC in November 2011, requesting an investigation into anticompetitive practices in the pediatric vaccine market.

"They don't even seem to think that monopolies are bad," said Albert A. Foer, president of the American Antitrust Institute, a research organization.

The American Antitrust Institute (AAI) is a Washington-based non-profit education, research, and advocacy organization.