Computer & Communications Industry Association (U.S.).

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) was involved in duplicating and making available court documents of interest to their members. The CCIA assembled the documents, assigned their own numbering scheme, and in some cases created microfiche copies of the records. Most of these relate to antitrust suits brought against IBM throughout the 1970s.

The U.S. Department of Justice began preliminary inquiries in 1964 into possible antitrust violations on the part of IBM. This was to become the longest and most complex of the antitrust suits brought IBM. The company had previously weathered antitrust actions filed by the Justice Department -- in 1932 for the practice of typing arrangements, a violation of the Clayton Act, and in 1952 on the charge that IBM was guilty of infractions of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, monopolizing interstate trade and commerce in the tabulating machine industry. IBM then moved into the electronic data processing market with the same aggressiveness it had demonstrated in the punched-card tabulating machine business. As an industry giant with a reputation for monopolizing any market it chose to enter, IBM's activities in the computer industry were generally mistrusted by both the government and its competition.

The principal case documented by this collection was filed in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York on January 17, 1969. The Justice Department alleged that IBM was again in violation of the Sherman Act in the general purpose digital computer systems market. The case went to trial on May 19, 1975, with Judge David N. Edelstein presiding. On January 1982, Assistant Attorney General William F. Baxter concluded that the case against IBM was without merit and signed a stipulation of dismissal.

At the same time that the Department of Justice's case against IBM was being prosecuted, some two dozen civil cases were brought against the company by other firms in the industry. Chiefly, these cases, like that of the Justice Department, involved IBM's alleged monopolistic dominance of the market and predatory behavior against equipment leasing firms and "plug-compatible" manufacturers (PCMs), i.e., companies producing products such as tape and disk drives, add-on memory components, data storage devices and other equipment designed for use with IBM mainframe systems. Even with so much of its resources tied up in the Department of Justice case, IBM was able to defend itself against the claims brought by its competitors with almost complete success -- either winning the case outright, obtaining a favorable verdict on appeal, or seeing the case dismissed by the court. In only one instance, Greyhound Computer Leasing v. IBM, did IBM make any settlement with the plaintiff. Greyhound received $17.7 million from IBM but no admission or conviction of wrongdoing by the industry giant.