misen,
First, on OEMs: If you go to Wikipedia's definition of OEM:
An original equipment manufacturer (frequently abbreviated "OEM") is a company that builds products or components which are used in products sold by another company (often called a value-added reseller, or VAR). An OEM will typically build to order based on designs of the VAR.
"OEMs" like Dell, HP, Gateway, Sun, etc. are all (primarily) direct sellers... They're not typically manufacturing assemblies that are sold to resellers.
To conclusively answer the question though, you'll need to go right to RPA and not rely upon a Wikipedia overview... :)
Second, re: damages & proving below-cost sales:
* You need to think in terms of a post-3m/LePage's world, where the results of that trial overturned the "strict" notion that "above-cost" sales are always legitimate. 3M banked on just such a defense and lost... Miserably. That was '03, I believe, and your reference harkens back to the much more innocent and naive 20th century... :)
* If you look at the effect of volume-bundling i.e. "first-dollar" rebates, etc., you'll see that such practice results in far-below-cost (if not negative) pricing for the incremental units that are sold beyond the volume target(s).
fpg |
