AG Paxton Reaches Settlement with Software Resellers over Anticompetitive Conduct

Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton today announced two settlements against MCCi LLC and VP Imaging Inc. doing business as DocuNav Solutions. The settlement stems from an antitrust investigation into agreements the companies made not to compete in the market for enterprise content management software. The Florida-based MCCi and Texas-based DocuNav resellers of Laserfiche software agreed not to compete against each other for customers in the state of Texas and not to solicit or hire each others employees.  Most of their customers are tax-supported local government entities that use Laserfiche brand software to manage and store information essential to their operations. The agreements between the software resellers violated the antitrust laws by limiting competition and increasing prices for these public contracts. Competitors entering into agreements not to compete for customers violates antitrust laws and raises the prices paid for goods and services said Attorney General Ken Paxton. When the affected customers are public entities taxpayers ultimately end up paying above market prices. This kind of interference in the free market is forbidden in the state of Texas and my office will continue to safeguard competition. In the settlements the companies agreed to terminate their anticompetitive agreements and not to enter into similar arrangements going forward. In addition MCCi and DocuNav will pay the State a combined $55000. The Office of the Attorney Generals (OAG) investigation also revealed that certain resellers represented themselves as sole source vendors to avoid competitive bidding for some local government contracts. In the OAGs settlement agreement with DocuNav the company agreed not to present their company as a sole source of Laserfiche software and services.