Data General Corporation v. Digidyne Corporation
| Decision Date | 01 July 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. 84-761,84-761 |
| Citation | 105 S.Ct. 3534,87 L.Ed.2d 657,473 U.S. 908 |
| Parties | DATA GENERAL CORPORATION v. DIGIDYNE CORPORATION, et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
On Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.
Petitioner in this case manufactured and sold a central processing unit for computers known as NOVA. Petitioner also created and sold a copyrighted operating system for NOVA called RDOS. RDOS was a very popular operating system, but petitioner's licensing agreement prevented customers from using it with any central processing unit other than petitioner's NOVA.
Page 908-Continued.
Respondents sued, claiming that petitioner's marketing strategy amounted to an illegal tie-in in violation of the antitrust laws. After a jury trial, the District Court granted petitioner's motion for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, defining the appropriate market as the "market for general purpose minicomputers and microprocessors." In re Data General Antitrust Litigation, 529 F.Supp. 801, 821 (ND Cal.1981). No reasonable juror could find, the court determined, that within this large and dynamic market with much larger competitors petitioner had the market power to restrain trade through an illegal tie-in arrangement. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed and reinstated the jury verdict in favor of respondents. 734 F.2d 1336 (1984). The court concluded that the tying arrangement was illegal per se, because petitioner's RDOS operating system was sufficiently unique and desirable to an appreciable number of buyers to enable petitioner to force those consumers to buy its tied product, the NOVA central processing unit.
The Court of Appeals' decision in this case is suspect on several grounds. As we have consistently explained, a particular tying arrangement may have procompetitive justifications, and it is thus inappropriate to condemn such an arrangement without considerable market analysis. National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla., 468 U.S. 85, 104, n. 26, 104 S.Ct. 2948, 2961-2962, n. 26, 82 L.Ed.2d 70 (1984); Jefferson Parish Hospital District No. 2 v. Hyde, 466 U.S. 2, 11-14, 104 S.Ct. 1551, 1558-1559, 80 L.Ed.2d 2 (1984). Anticompetitive forcing only exists if consumers are forced to buy a...
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