“The IBM case was the Antitrust Division’s Vietnam.” – Robert Bork
“Apple is worth nearly as much as Tesla, Meta, Berkshire Hathaway, United Health, and Visa – the sixth through 10th most valuable American companies – combined.” –Forbes; June 30, 2023
On January 17, 1969, the last day of the Johnson Administration, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against IBM. The suit was filed under the Sherman Act and claimed that IBM was trying to monopolize the market for “general-purpose digital computers.” There followed six years of discovery and 700 trial days over seven years after that. The latter involved 87 live witnesses, 860 deposition witnesses, 104,400 trial transcript pages, and 17,000 exhibits. On the government side, the case spanned the terms of five Presidents, nine Attorneys-General, and seven Antitrust Division chiefs. On the defense side, the lead firm was Cravath, Swain & Moore, some of whose attorneys worked on nothing else for 13 years. And, after those 13 years, the U.S. Department of Justice abruptly declared the case to be “without merit” and dropped the charges.
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