Virtual Maintenance, Inc. v. Prime Computer, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
957 F.2d 1318 · 1992
Citation profile
7 federal appellate · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2015
7 federal appellate · 1 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 15 U.S.C. § 1 (§ 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act)
Relies on Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corporation · Missouri v. Continential Insurance Cos. · Brown Shoe Co. v. United States · Northern Pacific Railway Co. v. United States · Continental Inc v. Gte Sylvania Incorporated
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Virtual seeks to distinguish these cases by pointing out that Ford is not the only customer of Prime’s products; rather, all of Ford’s design suppliers make up the customer market for “Ford-required CAD/ CAM.” This ignores the fact that Ford requires its suppliers to purchase the software updates for Ford’s benefit. Ford is ultimately the single consumer of its specialized design software because Ford’s requirements define the demand for the software and the updates. But defining the market by Ford’s requirements creates the appearance of market power based only upon the demand side of the market. Defining a market, or “submarket,” on the basis of demand considerations alone is erroneous because such an approach fails to consider the supply side of the market. Philip E. Areeda & Herbert Hovenkamp, Antitrust Law, ¶ 518.1g at 471 & n. 26 (Supp.1990) (citing United States v. Central State Bank, 817 F.2d 22 (6th Cir.1987)). The relevant product market cannot be determined without considering the cross-elasticity of supply.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Defining the market by customer demand after the customer has chosen a single supplier fails to take into account that the supplier . . . must compete with other similar suppliers to be designated the sole source in the first place”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.