Opinion ID: 195601
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Computer Service: Outputs and Inputs

Text: 5 Support service for DG computers entails a variety of activities and a corresponding array of goods and services. The principal activities are maintenance and repair of computer equipment. Maintenance includes care of parts subject to failure as well as replacement of hardware components to bring equipment up to date. Repair involves the diagnosis and correction of hardware failure. Service technicians remedy equipment problems either by actually mending a malfunctioning part (e.g., reformatting a broken disk drive) or replacing the part. 6 Each of these support service outputs benefit from a range of inputs. For example, engineering change orders, along with certain documentation and parts, allow service technicians to make technological updates to computer hardware. In order to identify the existence and location of a malfunctioning part, a service technician may use diagnostics (now increasingly sophisticated software), schematics (maps of the location and function of hardware elements), and various types of documentation, together with the technician's own experience acquired by diagnosing equipment problems. In order to actually mend a malfunctioning part, a technician might fix the part on the spot with routine tools or sophisticated software (e.g., a software diagnostic that can reformat a disk drive), or send the part to a repair depot run either by the technician's employer or another service organization. The repair of a malfunctioning part often requires very detailed information about the part (such as the information provided by schematics and other documentation), and may in turn require smaller replacement parts. Finally, replacement of parts naturally requires the availability of spares. At the core of this litigation is a dispute about Grumman's access to software diagnostics and other service tools produced by DG for use in the repair, upgrading, and maintenance of DG equipment.