Randall Collins has studied it rather closely.
Many of our most brilliant so called genius entrepreneurs were merely leeches on federally funded (taxpayer funded), often military, projects and research, that then could be readily privatized in civilian uses.
Very bright guy, Bill Gates, opportunistic guy, there on the spot.
Rode the antitrust federal litigation against IBM to a bonanza at Microsoft, which then licensed it back to IBM, at IBM and our, expense, in the long run.
Was he a Newton? Was Newton a Newton?
1969-1982 U.S. v. IBM[edit]
On January 17, 1969 the United States of America filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging 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. Subsequently the US government alleged IBM violated the antitrust laws in IBM’s actions directed against leasing companies and plug compatible peripheral manufacturers.
In June 1969 IBM unbundled its software and services in what many observers believed was in anticipation of and a direct result of the 1969 US Antitrust lawsuit. Overnight a competitive software market was created.[284]
Among the major violations asserted[285] were:
- Anticompetitive price discrimination such as giving away software services.
- Bundling of software with "related computer hardware equipment" for a single price.
- Predatorily priced and preannounced specific hardware "fighting machines".
- Developed and announced specific hardware products primarily for the purpose of discouraging customers from acquiring competing products.
- Announced certain future products knowing that it was unlikely to be able to ship such products within the announced time frame.
- Engaged in below cost and discount conduct in selected marketsin order to injure peripheral manufacturers and leasing companies.
It was in some ways one of the great single firm monopoly cases of all times. IBM produced 30 million pages of materials during discovery; it submitted its executives to a series of pretrial depositions. Trial began six years after the complaint was filed and then it battled in court for another six years. The trial transcript contains over 104,400 pages with thousands of documents placed in the record. It ended on January 8, 1982 when William Baxter, the then Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice dropped the case as “without merit.” .[281]
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