Opinion ID: 107938
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the foreign patent pools.

Text: HRI's major points in the Court of Appeals were that no injury to Zenith's business during the damage period had been proved; that if Zenith had suffered injury, it resulted wholly or partly from conduct prior to May 22, 1959, and to this extent was barred by the statute of limitations and by Zenith's 1957 settlement of certain antitrust litigation against RCA, General Electric, and Western Electric, which had the effect of releasing HRI from all liability for pre-settlement acts of the foreign patent pools; [7] that the Hazeltine companies had not illegally conspired with foreign pools; and that the damage award was excessive. Passing the other issues pressed by HRI, including the limitations defense, the Court of Appeals held that Zenith had failed to prove any injury to its export business during the damage period which resulted from pool activities either before or after the beginning of the damage period, and that the District Court's finding to the contrary was clearly erroneous. [8] We have concluded that the Court of Appeals erred in setting aside the District Court's decision with respect to the fact of damage in Canada. Zenith's evidence, although by no means conclusive, was sufficient to sustain the inference that Zenith had in fact been injured to some extent [9] by the Canadian pool's restraints upon imports of radio and television sets. On the other hand, we agree with the Court of Appeals that the District Court erred as to the English and Australian markets.
The findings of the District Court with respect to the operations of the Canadian pool may be briefly summarized. The Canadian patent pool, Canadian Radio Patents, Ltd. (CRPL), was formed in 1926 by the General Electric Company of the United States through its subsidiary, Canadian General Electric Company, and by Westinghouse through its Canadian subsidiary. The pool was made up largely of Canadian manufacturers, most of which were subsidiaries of American companies. The pool for many years had the exclusive right to sub-license the patents of its member companies and also those of Hazeltine and a number of other foreign concerns. About 5,000 patents were available to the pool for licensing, and only package licenses were granted, covering all patents in the pool and strictly limited to manufacture in Canada. No license to importers was available. The chief purpose of the pool was to protect the manufacturing members and licensees from competition by American and other foreign companies seeking to export their products into Canada. CRPL's efforts to prevent importation of radio and television sets from the United States were highly organized and effective. Agents, investigators, and manufacturer and distributor trade associations systematically policed the market; warning notices and advertisements advised distributors, dealers, and even consumers against selling or using unlicensed equipment. Infringement suits or threats thereof were regularly and effectively employed to dissuade dealers from handling American-made sets. For many years Zenith attempted to establish distribution in Canada, but distributors were warned off by the pool, and Zenith's efforts to secure a license for American-made goods were unsuccessful. Zenith then brought an antitrust suit against RCA, General Electric, and Western Electric. [10] This litigation was favorably settled, Zenith receiving, among other things, worldwide licenses on patents owned by the named defendants. Armed with these and other licenses, Zenith in 1958 began exporting radio and television products to Canada. It was promptly informed by CRPL that to continue business in Canada, Zenith would be required to sign CRPL's standard license, which did not permit importation, and that to sell in Canada it must manufacture there. Zenith was notified at the time that it was infringing at least one of Hazeltine's patents which had been placed with CRPL for licensing in Canada. Soon after this demand by CRPL, HRI began its infringement suit against Zenith. Some of the trial court's findings describing the operations of the Canadian pool and its drastic impact upon Zenith's foreign commerce did not date the events or state whether they had occurred before or after May 22, 1959. The damage award was confined to injuries sustained during the statutory period, but the trial court apparently deemed it immaterial whether the damage-causing acts occurred before or after the start of the damage period. Damages were awarded on the assumption that Zenith, absent the conspiracy, would have had 16% of the Canadian television market on May 22, 1959, and throughout the damage period rather than its actual 3% share. [11] Since the failure to have 16% of the market on the first day of the damage period was ascribed to pool operations, those operations must have occurred prior to May 22, 1959. Some part of the damages awarded, therefore, necessarily resulted from pre-damage period conduct. [12] The Court of Appeals reversed the District Court because it considered the evidence insufficient to prove the fact of any damage to Zenith after May 22, 1959. Having put aside HRI's statute of limitations defense, belatedly raised in the District Court and pressed in the Court of Appeals, [13] the import of the court's decision was that Zenith had not been damaged after May 22, 1959, by any act of the pool, whether occurring before or after that date. The Court of Appeals' overriding judgmentas it had to be if its no-injury rationale were to meet claims of damage period injury from pre-damage period conductwas that Zenith would have done no more business in Canada after May 22, 1959, had the patent pool never operated in that country. The Court of Appeals was clearly in error. The evidence was quite sufficient to sustain a finding that competing business concerns and patentees joined together to pool their Canadian patents, granting only package licenses and refusing to license imported goods. Their clear purpose was to exclude concerns like Zenith from the Canadian market unless willing to manufacture there. Zenith, consequently, was never able to obtain a license. This fact and the pool's vigorous campaign to discourage importers, distributors, dealers, and consumers from selling, handling, or using unlicensed foreign merchandise effectively prevented Zenith from making any headway in the Canadian market until after the 1957 settlement with RCA and its codefendants. And even in 1958, when Zenith undertook in earnest to establish its distribution system in Canada and to market its merchandise, Zenith was met with further pool advertisements threatening action against imported goods and further notifications, continuing past May 22, 1959, that its products were infringing pool patents and that no license was available unless Zenith manufactured in Canada. This evidence clearly warrants the inference that CRPL's past conduct interfered with and made more difficult the distribution of Zenith products in 1959 and later years. The District Court could reasonably conclude that the cumulative effects of the pool's campaign against imported goods had consequences lasting well into the damage period. It could also rationally be found from the evidence that Zenith, beginning in 1958, could not have reached its maximum potential by May 22, 1959, that the pool had effectively prevented an earlier beginning, and that Zenith therefore suffered damage during the damage period from having a smaller share of the market than it would have had if the pool had never existed. We also conclude that the record evidence is sufficient to support a finding of damage resulting from events occurring after the beginning of the damage period. We need not merely assume that the Canadian pool continued throughout the period of this suit, as we are entitled to do in the absence of clear evidence of its termination. See, e. g., Local 167 v. United States, 291 U. S. 293, 297-298 (1934); United States v. Oregon State Medical Society, 343 U. S. 326, 333 (1952). HRI frankly conceded the continuation of the pool before the District Court, [14] and it appears sufficiently clear that throughout this time Zenith was deprived of what had always been refused ita license on pool patents permitting it to sell American-made merchandise in Canada. On May 12, 1959, the pool manager conferred with Zenith's vice president, informing him that Zenith was infringing pool patents and would require a license, but that licenses were granted only for local manufacture. This was followed on June 5, 1959, by a letter stating without reservation that Zenith receivers were infringing, and enclosing the pool's standard license form. This was nothing more nor less than a demand during the damage period that Zenith either manufacture in Canada and take the standard package license or cease its activities in that country. [15] There is no evidence that the pool ever retreated from that position during the next four years. Zenith thus continued to operate without a patent license unburdened by conspiratorial conduct and granted on terms which would satisfy the antitrust laws. This deprivation in itself necessarily had an impact on Zenith and constituted an injury to its business. We find singularly unpersuasive the argument that Zenith was as well off without a license as with one. This is little more than an assertion that pool licenses, from which CRPL and its participants enjoyed substantial income, were without value. Without the license, doing business in Canada obviously involved weighty risks for Zenith itself, besides requiring it to convince the trade that it could legally and effectively do business without clearance from CRPL. [16] Of course, Zenith determined to take these risks, serious as they were. Although HRI brought the instant litigation claiming infringement of an HRI domestic patent, the foreign counterpart of which had been made available to the Canadian pool by Hazeltine, Zenith persevered in its Canadian efforts. The claim is now pressed, and the Court of Appeals held, that the pool bothered neither Zenith nor its distributors after mid-1959 and that Zenith ran the gantlet so successfully that not having a license made no difference whatsoever. It is true that the record discloses no specific instance of subsequent infringement suits or threats against Zenith's existing or potential distributors or dealers. But there is evidence that the pool was not dormant after May 1959. The record contains a letter from the pool to a distributor of Motorola products containing clear warnings against handling unlicensed, imported merchandise. [17] More significant, the fair import of the testimony by Zenith officers was that the pool remained active during the damage period and prevented Zenith from establishing an effective distribution system throughout Canada. Zenith was able to obtain independent distributors in the Western Provinces, but it was unable to do so in the Central and the Maritime Provinces, where it necessarily relied on its own subsidiaries for distribution. These officers, experienced businessmen, also testified to the similarities between the Canadian and American markets, attributing Zenith's much poorer Canadian performance to the discouraging and repressive effects of the pool. The Court of Appeals did not refuse to credit this testimony, as HRI insists we should do, [18] but accepting it as some evidence of damage, considered it of insufficient weight to prove injury to Zenith's business. In this respect the Court of Appeals both gave insufficient deference to the findings of the trial judge and failed to adhere to the teachings of Bigelow v. RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., 327 U. S. 251 (1946), and other cases dealing with the standard of proof in treble-damage actions. In applying the clearly erroneous standard to the findings of a district court sitting without a jury, appellate courts must constantly have in mind that their function is not to decide factual issues de novo. The authority of an appellate court, when reviewing the findings of a judge as well as those of a jury, is circumscribed by the deference it must give to decisions of the trier of the fact, who is usually in a superior position to appraise and weigh the evidence. The question for the appellate court under Rule 52 (a) is not whether it would have made the findings the trial court did, but whether on the entire evidence [it] is left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed. United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U. S. 364, 395 (1948). See also United States v. National Assn. of Real Estate Boards, 339 U. S. 485, 495-496 (1950); Commissioner v. Duberstein, 363 U. S. 278, 289-291 (1960). Trial and appellate courts alike must also observe the practical limits of the burden of proof which may be demanded of a treble-damage plaintiff who seeks recovery for injuries from a partial or total exclusion from a market; damage issues in these cases are rarely susceptible of the kind of concrete, detailed proof of injury which is available in other contexts. The Court has repeatedly held that in the absence of more precise proof, the factfinder may conclude as a matter of just and reasonable inference from the proof of defendants' wrongful acts and their tendency to injure plaintiffs' business, and from the evidence of the decline in prices, profits and values, not shown to be attributable to other causes, that defendants' wrongful acts had caused damage to the plaintiffs. Bigelow v. RKO Pictures, Inc., supra, at 264. See also Eastman Kodak Co. v. Southern Photo Materials Co., 273 U. S. 359, 377-379 (1927); Story Parchment Co. v. Paterson Parchment Paper Co., 282 U. S. 555, 561-566 (1931). In Bigelow, a treble-damage plaintiff claimed injury from a conspiracy among film distributors to deny him first-run pictures. He offered evidence comparing his profits with those of a competing theater granted first-run showings and also measuring his current profits against those earned when first-run films had been available to him. This Court, reversing the Court of Appeals, found the evidence sufficient to sustain an award of damages. Although the factfinder is not entitled to base a judgment on speculation or guesswork, the jury may make a just and reasonable estimate of the damage based on relevant data, and render its verdict accordingly. In such circumstances, `juries are allowed to act upon probable and inferential, as well as direct and positive proof.' Story Parchment Co. v. Paterson Co., supra, 561-4; Eastman Kodak Co. v. Southern Photo Co., supra, 377-9. Any other rule would enable the wrongdoer to profit by his wrongdoing at the expense of his victim. It would be an inducement to make wrongdoing so effective and complete in every case as to preclude any recovery, by rendering the measure of damages uncertain. Failure to apply it would mean that the more grievous the wrong done, the less likelihood there would be of a recovery. 327 U. S., at 264-265. Here, Zenith was denied a valuable license and submitted testimony that without the license it had encountered distribution difficulties which prevented its securing a share of the market comparable to that which it enjoyed in the United States, and which its business proficiency, demonstrated in the United States, dictated it should have obtained in Canada. CRPL was an established organization with a long history of successfully excluding imported merchandise; and in view of its continued existence during the damage period, the injury alleged by Zenith was precisely the type of loss that the claimed violations of the antitrust laws would be likely to cause. The trial court was entitled to infer from this circumstantial evidence that the necessary causal relation between the pool's conduct and the claimed damage existed. See Continental Ore Co. v. Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., 370 U. S. 690, 696-701 (1962).
Hazeltine patents were made available to the English pool in 1930. The pool issued only package licenses, restricted to local manufacture. Although pool radio patents had expired prior to the beginning of the damage period, the trial court found, and we assume, that the pool held television patents which would not be licensed for television sets made in the United States. [19] Zenith was interested in the English market and made exclusive arrangements with one distributor desiring to handle its merchandise. At no time during or before the damage period, however, did Zenith make available or offer for sale a substantial number of television sets suitable for the English market or make any other serious efforts to enter that market. It attained no appreciable position in the English television market. Having initially found the patent pool responsible over the years for Zenith's failure to participate in the English market, the trial court, after further proceedings, held that a government embargo, not the patent pool, was the sole reason for Zenith's not entering the English market prior to the beginning of the damage period in 1959; until then, the District Court found, the pool [was] not called upon to exercise the type of conduct that [it] exercised in Canada. It did not, however, retreat from its conclusion that restraints imposed by the pool had foreclosed Zenith during the damage period. [20] In this respect we agree with the Court of Appeals that the trial court clearly erred. Based on our own examination of the record, we are convinced that even with the ending of the embargo in mid-1959, Zenith faced other obstacles which effectively discouraged its entry into the English market and for which the pool was not responsible. Positing that Zenith could not get a license from the English pool and that it did not enter the British market before or during the damage period, the issue is whether, once the embargo was lifted, Zenith wanted and intended to enter, had the capacity to do so, and was prevented from entering by its inability to secure a patent license and by other operations of the English patent pool. Section 4 of the Clayton Act required that Zenith show an injury to its business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws. If Zenith's failure to enter the English market was attributable to its lack of desire, its limited production capabilities, or to other factors independent of HRI's unlawful conduct, Zenith would not have met its burden under § 4. [21] Zenith was interested in the English market; this much is clear. But its standard domestic television set was manufactured to operate on 525- and 625-line-per-second scanning signals, whereas the 405-line signal was standard in England until after the damage period. Similarly, while FM transmission was utilized in the United States for the audio portion, AM signals were used in England. Zenith's regular product thus was not salable in the English market. To succeed at all, Zenith had either to produce a differently equipped set or to provide for the mass conversion of its standard receivers. Unquestionably, the company had the facilities and the ability to follow either course. But it is equally clear that it pursued neither. [22] A change in the standard British broadcast to include a 625-line signal was under consideration, even imminent, during the damage period. Zenith's merchandise would in any event have sold at prices substantially higher than those prevailing in the English market; tariffs and freight costs tended to widen the differential. Producing a new set for the English market, or modifying existent models on a large-scale basis, would have involved substantial costs. Based on the evidence before us, including the correspondence between Zenith and its British representative, we think the Court of Appeals correctly rejected the inference that Zenith intended to and was prepared to enter the English television market during the damage period, and correctly concluded that Zenith was in fact waiting for a change in English standards to a 625-line system. 388 F. 2d, at 37. It clearly emerges from the evidence that Zenith had every intention to promote the sale of its television sets if and when the signal change occurred. Given that event, neither the absence of a pool license nor pool threats against it or its customers would have deterred Zenith from a major effort to penetrate the British market. Why the existence of the pool, which as far as the record shows was quiescent during the damage period, should be credited with the power to discourage Zenith's entry before the signal change but not after is difficult to grasp. But the question at hand is not whether, if Zenith had decided to enter the market, the pool would have been a deterrent and inflicted damage. Rather, it is whether Zenith was in fact constrained by the pool to stay out of England during the damage period or whether Zenith's own business calculus led it to await more favorable conditions. As we have said, the latter is the only permissible inference from this record.
The Australian patent pool, which had exclusive rights to license Hazeltine patents, also granted licenses only for local manufacture. Had HRI and Hazeltine's conspiracy with the Australian pool effectively kept Zenith from that market, a compensable violation of the antitrust laws unquestionably would have occurred. But the findings of the District Court are wholly silent as to how the Australian pool had any impact on Zenith's business. An officer of Zenith revealed that Zenith had exported no products to Australia since the 1920's or early 1930's. Zenith had not requested a pool license during the 20-year period preceding the trial. A government embargo was found by the District Court to have foreclosed Zenith's American-made merchandise until well into the damage period. High tariffs and shipping costs were additional barriers, as well as the prospect of vigorous competition. Nothing in the record before us would permit the inference that Zenith either intended or was prepared to enter the Australian market during the damage period. The Court of Appeals was correct in reversing the District Court's award of damages with respect to the Australian market.
In setting aside the District Court's grant of injunctive relief against continued participation by HRI and Hazeltine in any patent pool or similar association restricting Zenith's export trade, [23] the Court of Appeals stated, without more: It follows from our conclusion with respect to the foreign patent pools that injunctive relief against `threatened loss or damage' directed at those pools, alleged by Zenith to be unlawful conspiracies, cannot be justified under 15 U. S. C. Sec. 26. Paragraph C of the injunction granted must be stricken. 388 F. 2d, at 39. The evident premise for striking Paragraph C was that Zenith's failure to prove the fact of injury barred injunctive relief as well as treble damages. This was unsound, for § 16 of the Clayton Act, 15 U. S. C. § 26, which was enacted by the Congress to make available equitable remedies previously denied private parties, invokes traditional principles of equity and authorizes injunctive relief upon the demonstration of threatened injury. [24] That remedy is characteristically available even though the plaintiff has not yet suffered actual injury, see Bedford Cut Stone Co. v. Journeymen Stone Cutters' Assn., 274 U. S. 37, 54-55 (1927); he need only demonstrate a significant threat of injury from an impending violation of the antitrust laws or from a contemporary violation likely to continue or recur. See Swift & Co. v. United States, 196 U. S. 375, 396 (1905); Bedford Cut Stone Co. v. Journeymen Stone Cutters' Assn., supra, at 54; United States v. Oregon State Medical Society, 343 U. S. 326, 333 (1952); United States v. W. T. Grant Co., 345 U. S. 629, 633 (1953). Moreover, the purpose of giving private parties treble-damage and injunctive remedies was not merely to provide private relief, but was to serve as well the high purpose of enforcing the antitrust laws. E. g., United States v. Borden Co., 347 U. S. 514, 518 (1954). Section 16 should be construed and applied with this purpose in mind, and with the knowledge that the remedy it affords, like other equitable remedies, is flexible and capable of nice adjustment and reconciliation between the public interest and private needs as well as between competing private claims. Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U. S. 321, 329-330 (1944). Its availability should be conditioned by the necessities of the public interest which Congress has sought to protect. Id., at 330. Judged by the proper standard, the record before us warranted the injunction with respect to Canada. The findings of the District Court were that HRI and CRPL were conspiring to exclude Zenith and others from the Canadian market; there was nothing indicating that this clear violation of the antitrust laws had terminated or that the threat to Zenith inherent in the conduct would cease in the foreseeable future. Neither the relative quiescence of the pool during the litigation nor claims that objectionable conduct would cease with the judgment negated the threat to Zenith's foreign trade. [25] That threat was too clear for argument, and injunctive relief against HRI with respect to the Canadian market was wholly proper. We also reinstate the injunction entered by the District Court insofar as it more broadly barred HRI from conspiring with others to restrict or prevent Zenith from entering any other foreign market. In exercising its equitable jurisdiction, [a] federal court has broad power to restrain acts which are of the same type or class as unlawful acts which the court has found to have been committed or whose commission in the future, unless enjoined, may fairly be anticipated from the defendant's conduct in the past. NLRB v. Express Publishing Co., 312 U. S. 426, 435 (1941). See also United States v. National Lead Co., 332 U. S. 319, 328-335 and n. 4 (1947). Given the findings that HRI was conspiring with the Canadian pool, its purpose to exclude Zenith from Canada and its violation of the Sherman Act were clearly established. Its propensity for arrangements of this sort was also indicated by the findings revealing its participation in similar pools operating in England and Australia. [26] Zenith, a company interested in expanding its foreign commerce and having suffered at the hands of HRI and its coconspirators in the Canadian market, was entitled to injunctive relief against like conduct by HRI in other world markets. We see no reason that the federal courts, in exercising the traditional equitable powers extended to them by § 16, should not respond to the salutary principle that when one has been found to have committed acts in violation of a law he may be restrained from committing other related unlawful acts. NLRB v. Express Publishing Co., supra, at 436. Although a district court may not enjoin all future illegal conduct of the defendant, or even all future violations of the antitrust laws, however unrelated to the violation found by the court, e. g., New York, N. H. & H. R. Co. v. ICC, 200 U. S. 361, 401 (1906), [w]hen the purpose to restrain trade appears from a clear violation of law, it is not necessary that all of the untraveled roads to that end be left open and that only the worn one be closed. International Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U. S. 392, 400 (1947). This is particularly true in treble-damage cases, which are brought for private ends, but which also serve the public interest in that they effectively pry open to competition a market that has been closed by defendants' illegal restraints. Id., at 401.