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A: Manhattan, New York, New York, United States

The Antitrust Case, U.S. v. IBM, is Tried and Eventually Withdrawn

5/19/1975 to 1/8/1982

On May 19, 1975 the Federal Government’s antitrust suit against IBM went to trial. The complaint for the case U.S. v. IBM had been filed in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York on January 17, 1969 by the Justice Department. The suit alleged that IBM violated the Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general purpose electronic digital computer system market, specifically computers designed primarily for business.

After thousands of hours of testimony (testimony of over 950 witnesses, 87 in court, the remainder by deposition), and the submission of tens of thousands of exhibits, on January 8, 1982 the anti-trust case U.S. v. IBM was withdrawn on the grounds that the case was "without merit."

30,000,000 pages of documents were generated in the course of this anti-trust case.

Timeline Themes