Starr v. Sony BMG

08-5637-cv
Starr v. Sony BM G
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
_______________
August Term, 2009
(Argued: September 21, 2009 Decided: January 13, 2010)
Docket No. 08-5637-cv
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KEVIN STARR, MATT PUTMAN , CINDY SELEY , on behalf of herself and all others similarly
situated, DAVID PASCHKETT , on behalf of all others similarly situated, CHRISTOPHER MICHAUD ,
on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, LISA OWENS, RICHARD BENHAM , on behalf
of himself and all others similarly situated, KEATON LANDRY, individually and on behalf of all
others similarly situated, SHERI CLARK, RACHAEL HALL and MITCHELL HORTON ,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
—v.—
SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, SONY CORPORATION OF AMERICA, BERTELSMANN, INC.,
UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP, TIME WARNER INC., formerly known as AOL Time Warner Cable,
Inc., WARNER MUSIC GROUP CORP., EMI MUSIC NORTH AMERICA, CAPITOL RECORDS INC.,
doing business as EMI Music North America, JOHN DOES 1-100, BERTELSMANN MUSIC GROUP,
INC., BMG MUSIC, BMG MUSIC PUBLISHING, doing business as The RCA Record Label,
CAPITOL-EMI MUSIC, INC. and VIRGIN RECORDS AMERICA, INC.,
Defendants-Appellees.*
_______________
Before:
NEWMAN , WALKER, and KATZMANN , Circuit Judges.
_______________
*
The Clerk of the Court is directed to amend the official caption as set forth above.
Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of
New York (Loretta Preska, Judge), entered October 21, 2008, dismissing Plaintiffs-Appellants’
Second Consolidated Amended Complaint (“SCAC”) for failure to state a claim upon which
relief can be granted. We hold that the SCAC contains “enough factual matter (taken as true) to
suggest that an agreement was made,” Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007), and
therefore states a claim for violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. We therefore vacate the
judgment of the district court and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
_______________
GARY S. JACOBSON (Christopher Lovell, Imtiaz A. Siddiqui, of counsel),
Lovell Stewart Halebian LLP, New York, NY; John Stoia and Bonny
Sweeney, of counsel, Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP, San
Diego, CA, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.
KENNETH R. LOGAN (Helena Almeida, of counsel), Simpson Thacher &
Bartlett LLP, New York, NY; Alan M. Wiseman, Mark C. Schechter, and
Thomas A. Isaacson, of counsel, Howrey LLP, Washington, DC; Peter T.
Barbur and Rachel G. Skaistis, of counsel, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP,
New York, NY, for Defendants-Appellees.
_______________
KATZMANN , Circuit Judge:
This case calls upon us to determine whether an antitrust complaint alleging a conspiracy
by major record labels to fix the prices and terms under which their music would be sold over the
Internet states a claim for violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act under Bell Atlantic Corp. v.
Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007). We hold that Plaintiffs-Appellants’ Second Consolidated
Amended Complaint (“SCAC”) contains “enough factual matter (taken as true) to suggest that an
agreement was made,” id. at 555, and therefore states a claim. We vacate the judgment of the
district court and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
2
BACKGROUND
The SCAC contains the following non-conclusory factual allegations, which we must
accept as true.1
Defendants produce, license and distribute music sold as digital files (“Digital Music”)
online via the Internet (“Internet Music”) and on compact discs (“CDs”). Together, defendants
EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (“Sony BMG”), Universal Music Group Recordings, Inc.
(“UMG”), and Warner Music Group Corp. (“WMG”), control over 80% of Digital Music sold to
end purchasers in the United States.
Initially, defendants Bertelsmann, Inc. (“Bertelsmann”), WMG, and EMI agreed to launch
a service called MusicNet. Defendants UMG and Sony Corporation (“Sony”) agreed to launch a
service called Duet, later renamed pressplay. All defendants signed distribution agreements with
MusicNet or pressplay and sold music directly to consumers over the Internet through these
ventures (the “joint ventures”). Both the joint ventures and the Recording Industry Association
of America (“RIAA”) provided a forum and means through which defendants could
communicate about pricing, terms, and use restrictions.
To obtain Internet Music from all major record labels, a consumer initially would have
had to subscribe to both MusicNet and pressplay, at a cost of approximately $240 per year. Both
services required consumers to agree to unpopular Digital Rights Management terms (“DRMs”).
1
The Supreme Court’s most recent iteration of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule
8(a) pleading standard stresses that “the tenet that a court must accept as true all of the
allegations contained in a complaint is inapplicable to legal conclusions. . . . [Therefore,] a court
considering a motion to dismiss can choose to begin by identifying pleadings that, because they
are no more than conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129
S.Ct. 1937, 1949-50 (May 18, 2009). We accept that invitation here, and do not include those
allegations in the SCAC that “are no more than conclusions.”
3
For example, pressplay prohibited consumers from copying more than two songs from any
particular artist onto a CD each month. Music purchased from MusicNet and pressplay would
often “expire” unless repurchased: A MusicNet consumer would need to repurchase music each
year and a pressplay consumer who unsubscribed would immediately lose access to all of the
music he or she had purchased. MusicNet and pressplay also did not allow consumers to transfer
songs from their computers to portable digital music players like the iPod. One industry
commentator observed that MusicNet and pressplay did not offer reasonable prices, and one
prominent computer industry magazine concluded that “nobody in their right mind will want to
use” these services. SCAC ¶ 77.
Moreover, the pricing of CDs accounted for costs such as copying the compact discs;
producing the CD case, labels and anti-shoplifting packaging; shipping, both to the distributor
and then to record stores; labor, such as shelving CDs and staffing cash registers; and damaged
and unsold inventory. All of these costs were eliminated with Internet Music. SCAC ¶ 71.
However, these dramatic cost reductions were not accompanied by dramatic price reductions for
Internet Music, as would be expected in a competitive market.
Eventually, defendants and the joint ventures began to sell Internet Music to consumers
through entities they did not own or control. However, the entities could only sell defendants’
music if they contracted with MusicNet to provide Internet Music for the same prices and with
the same restrictions as MusicNet itself or other MusicNet licensees. If the licensee attempted to
license music from another company, defendants forced them to pay penalties or terminated their
licenses. In addition, each defendant was paid shares of the total revenue generated by a joint
venture licensee, rather than on a per song basis, linking each defendant’s financial interest in the
4
joint venture to the total sales of all labels rather than to its own market share.
Defendants also used Most Favored Nation clauses (“MFNs”) in their licenses that had
the effect of guaranteeing that the licensor who signed the clause received terms no less favorable
than the terms offered to other licensors. Defendants attempted to hide the MFNs because they
knew they would attract antitrust scrutiny. For example, EMI and MusicNet had a “side letter”
agreement which assured that EMI’s core terms would be no less favorable than Bertelsmann’s
and WMG’s. “EMI CEO Rob Glaser decided to put the MFN in a secret side letter because
‘there are legal/antitrust reasons why it would be bad idea to have MFN clauses in any, or
certainly all, of these agreements.’” SCAC ¶ 95. UMG also used MFN clauses in its license
agreements. A January 12, 2006 article in the Wall Street Journal confirmed that defendants
used MFNs, and, according to Jonathan Potter, the executive director of the Digital Music
Association, “seller-side MFNs are inherently price-increasing and anticompetitive.” SCAC ¶
97.
Edgar Bronfman, Jr., the current CEO of WMG, explained pressplay’s pricing scheme as
follows:
Pressplay has what we call an affiliate model where we determine the price, and we offer
a percentage of that price to the retailing partner . . . . The reason we’ve chosen that,
frankly, is because we are concerned that the continuing devaluation of music will
proceed unabated unless we do something about it.
SCAC ¶ 86.
After services other than defendants’ joint ventures began to distribute defendants’
Internet Music, defendants “agreed”2 to a wholesale price floor of about 70 cents per song, which
2
The allegation that defendants agreed to this price floor is obviously conclusory, and is
not accepted as true.
5
they enforced in part through MFN agreements. The MFN agreements, signed by Internet Music
retailers and defendants, specified that the retailers had to pay each defendant the same amount
per song. Whereas eMusic, the most popular online music service selling Internet Music owned
by independent labels, currently charges $0.25 per song and places no restrictions on how
purchasers can upload their music to digital music players (like the iPod) or burn to CDs,
defendants’ wholesale price is more than double, about $0.70 per song. Moreover, all defendants
refuse to do business with eMusic, the #2 Internet Music retailer behind only the iTunes Store.
Finally, the SCAC alleges that defendants’ price fixing is currently the subject of: 1) a
pending investigation by the Office of the New York State Attorney General regarding wholesale
prices charged for Internet Music; 2) a Department of Justice (“DOJ”) investigation into
collusion and price fixing begun in March 2006; and 3) a DOJ investigation into whether
defendants misled DOJ about the formation and operation of MusicNet and pressplay.
Based on all of these factual allegations, plaintiffs allege that defendants engaged in a
continuing conspiracy to “restrain the availability and distribution of Internet Music, fix and
maintain at artificially high and non-competitive levels the prices at which they sold Internet
Music and impose unreasonably restrictive terms in the purchase and use of Internet Music.”
SCAC ¶ 126. They also allege that they were injured by paying more for Internet Music and CDs
than they would have in the absence of an illegal agreement.
From December 29, 2005 through July 2006, plaintiffs filed actions in various state and
federal courts, alleging defendants had agreed to fix the price of Digital Music. The Judicial
Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred and centralized twenty-eight actions to the Southern
District of New York, before Judge Loretta Preska. In April 2007, plaintiffs filed a First
6
Consolidated Amended Complaint. Pursuant to the district court’s orders, defendants then
provided plaintiffs with a letter summarizing the grounds on which they intended to move to
dismiss the First Consolidated Amended Complaint. Plaintiffs filed a Second Consolidated
Amended Complaint (“SCAC”) in June 2007. The SCAC brought claims under Section 1 of the
Sherman Act and state antitrust and unfair and deceptive trade practices statutes. It also brought
state common law claims for unjust enrichment. On July 30, 2007 defendants moved to dismiss
the SCAC, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).
At oral argument, plaintiffs requested leave to amend paragraph ninety-nine of the SCAC
to allege a parallel price increase. The proposed amendment alleged that:
By early 2005, Defendants Sony BMG’s, Capitol-EMI Music’s, UMG’s and WMG’s
direct costs had gone substantially down because each of these Defendants’ digitization
costs of the initial cataloging had been completed, technological improvements (including
increased computer processing power and speed) had reduced the remaining costs of
digitizing new releases, the return and store credit and other costs alleged in ¶ 71
remained at zero or virtually zero despite substantially higher sales volumes, and the
fixed costs of each of these Defendants’ digital business per unit of sales volume had
declined by approximately two-thirds. Nonetheless, these Defendants then engaged in or
about May 2005 in the parallel, highly unusual behavior of each raising prices from the
65 cents per song level to at or about 70 cents per song . . . .
These parallel, highly unusual increases in prices when direct costs had substantially
decreased, enforced by MFNs, were similar to Defendants’ causing, as alleged in ¶¶ 74-
75, the joint ventures, via MFNs and other means, to increase the prices of Internet Music
during 2002 to 2003 to unreasonably high levels despite substantial reductions in the
direct costs of Internet Music relative to CDs.
Third Consolidated Amendment Complaint ¶ 99.
By Memorandum and Order dated October 9, 2008, the district court granted the
defendants’ motion to dismiss, holding that the complaint did not state a claim under Bell
Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly. The district court first found that plaintiffs did not challenge the
existence or creation of the joint ventures, and the operation of the joint ventures therefore did
7
not yield an inference of illegal agreement. At the same time, the district court held that
plaintiffs’ “bald allegation that the joint ventures were shams is conclusory and implausible.” In
re Digital Music Antitrust Litig., 592 F. Supp. 2d 435, 442 (S.D.N.Y. 2008). According to the
district court, plaintiffs did not challenge the joint ventures’ “explicit agreement,” and any
inference “of subsequent agreement based on prior, unchallenged explicit agreement is
unreasonable.” Id. at 443. The district court went on to hold that other circumstances alleged by
plaintiffs were “equivocal” and did not justify the inference of agreement, and the imposition of
the unpopular DRMs and pricing structure was not against defendants’ individual economic self-
interest when viewed against the backdrop of widespread music piracy. Id. at 444-45. Finally,
the district court denied plaintiffs’ motion to amend paragraph ninety-nine of the SCAC as futile.
Id. at 445 n.14. This appeal followed.
DISCUSSION
We review de novo a district court’s dismissal of a complaint for failure to state a claim
under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 12(b)(6), accepting all factual allegations as true,
but “giving no effect to legal conclusions couched as factual allegations.” Port Dock & Stone
Corp. v. Oldcastle Northeast, Inc., 507 F.3d 117, 121 (2d Cir. 2007). We review the denial of
leave to amend a complaint for abuse of discretion, unless the denial was based on an
interpretation of law, in which case the legal conclusion is reviewed de novo. Jones v. N.Y. State
Div. of Military and Naval Affairs, 166 F.3d 45, 49 (2d Cir. 1999).
Generally, “[w]hile a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss does not
need detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff’s obligation to provide the grounds of his
entitle[ment] to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the
8
elements of a cause of action will not do.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555 (internal quotation marks
omitted) (alteration in original) (citations omitted). Instead, “[f]actual allegations must be
enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level, on the assumption that all the
allegations in the complaint are true (even if doubtful in fact).” Id. (citations omitted). What is
required are “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Id. at 570. In
the words of the Supreme Court’s most recent iteration of this standard, “[a] claim has facial
plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable
inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, -- U.S. --,
129 S.Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009). “[W]here the well-pleaded facts do not permit the court to infer
more than the mere possibility of misconduct,” however, dismissal is appropriate. Id. at 1950.
Under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, “[e]very contract, combination . . . , or conspiracy,
in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is . . . illegal.”
15 U.S.C. § 1. The crucial question in a Section 1 case is therefore whether the challenged
conduct “stem[s] from independent decision or from an agreement, tacit or express.” Theatre
Enters., Inc. v. Paramount Film Distrib. Corp., 346 U.S. 537, 540 (1954). Although parallel
business behavior “is admissible circumstantial evidence from which the fact finder may infer
agreement,” it does not itself constitute a violation of the Sherman Act, because it is “consistent
with conspiracy, but just as much in line with a wide swath of rational and competitive business
strategy unilaterally prompted by common perceptions of the market.” Twombly, 550 U.S. 553-
54 (internal quotation marks omitted).
While for purposes of a summary judgment motion, a Section 1 plaintiff must offer
evidence that “tend[s] to rule out the possibility that the defendants were acting independently,”
9
id. at 554 (citing Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574 (1986)), to
survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), a plaintiff need only allege “enough factual
matter (taken as true) to suggest that an agreement was made.” Id. at 556; see also In re Elevator
Antitrust Litig., 502 F.3d 47, 50 (2d Cir. 2007) (per curiam) (quoting Twombly for the same
proposition).
As the Supreme Court clarified in Twombly:
Asking for plausible grounds to infer an agreement does not impose a probability
requirement at the pleading stage; it simply calls for enough fact to raise a reasonable
expectation that discovery will reveal evidence of illegal agreement. And, of course, a
well-pleaded complaint may proceed even if it strikes a savvy judge that actual proof of
those facts is improbable, and that a recovery is very remote and unlikely.
Id. at 556 (footnote and internal quotation marks omitted).
Thus, an allegation of parallel conduct coupled with only a bare assertion of conspiracy is
not sufficient to state a Section 1 claim. Id. Instead, allegations of parallel conduct “must be
placed in a context that raises a suggestion of a preceding agreement, not merely parallel conduct
that could just as well be independent action.” Id. at 557. Examples of a parallel conduct
allegation that would suffice under this standard include “parallel behavior that would probably
not result from chance, coincidence, independent responses to common stimuli, or mere
interdependence unaided by an advance understanding among the parties.” Id. at 556 n.4
(internal quotation marks omitted).
In Twombly, plaintiffs brought a Section 1 claim centered around the market for local
telephone service. In 1984, a system of seven regional local-telephone-service monopolies,
called Baby Bells, was created, along with a separate, competitive market for long-distance
telephone service from which the regional Baby Bells were excluded. Id. at 549. In 1996,
10
Congress withdrew approval for the regional Baby Bell monopolies in enacting the
Telecommunications Act of 1996, which required the Baby Bells to share their local networks
with competitors (called “CLECs”), in exchange for authority to enter the long-distance service
market. Id. Not surprisingly, the Baby Bells vigorously litigated their “sharing” obligations
under the Act. Id. Not satisfied with the Baby Bells’ efforts at sharing, the plaintiffs in Twombly
sued, alleging that the Baby Bells engaged in parallel conduct in their respective regions,
including making unfair agreements with the CLECs for access to Baby Bell networks, providing
CLECs inferior connections to those networks, and overcharging the CLECs, all in order to
inhibit the growth of CLECs and prevent them from competing effectively with the Baby Bells.
Id. at 550-51. The complaint also alleged that the Baby Bells’ failure to compete with one
another, coupled with a statement from one Baby Bell’s CEO that competing in the territory of
another Baby Bell “might be a good way to turn a quick dollar but that doesn’t make it right,”
supported the allegation that the Baby Bells entered into a conspiracy to prevent entry into their
local markets and agreed to refrain from competing with one another. Id. at 551.
The Supreme Court held that the ultimate conspiracy allegation was merely a “legal
conclusion[] resting on the prior allegations,” id. at 564, and the actual factual allegations in the
complaint were insufficient because they did not “invest[] either the action or inaction alleged
with a plausible suggestion of conspiracy.” Id. at 566. It was natural for each Baby Bell to resist
the competition from the CLECs that the 1996 Act mandated, and “nothing in the complaint
intimates that the resistance to the [CLECs] was anything more than the natural, unilateral
reaction of each [Baby Bell] intent on keeping its regional dominance.” Id. at 566. As to the
Baby Bells’ failure to encroach on each others’ territory, given that prior to the
11
Telecommunications Act of 1996 monopoly was the norm, rather than the exception, “a natural
explanation for the noncompetition alleged is that the former Government-sanctioned
monopolists were sitting tight, expecting their neighbors to do the same . . . . [T]he complaint
itself [gave] reasons to believe that the [Baby Bells] would see their best interests in keeping to
their old turf.” Id. at 568.
Applying the language and reasoning of Twombly to the facts of this case leads us to
conclude respectfully that the district court erred in dismissing the complaint for failure to state a
Section 1 claim. The present complaint succeeds where Twombly’s failed because the complaint
alleges specific facts sufficient to plausibly suggest that the parallel conduct alleged was the
result of an agreement among the defendants. As discussed above, the complaint contains the
following non-conclusory factual allegations of parallel conduct. First, defendants agreed to
launch MusicNet and pressplay, both of which charged unreasonably high prices and contained
similar DRMs. Second, none of the defendants dramatically reduced their prices for Internet
Music (as compared to CDs), despite the fact that all defendants experienced dramatic cost
reductions in producing Internet Music. Third, when defendants began to sell Internet Music
through entities they did not own or control, they maintained the same unreasonably high prices
and DRMs as MusicNet itself. Fourth, defendants used MFNs in their licenses that had the effect
of guaranteeing that the licensor who signed the MFN received terms no less favorable than
terms offered to other licensors. For example, both EMI and UMG used MFN clauses in their
licensing agreements with MusicNet. Fifth, defendants used the MFNs to enforce a wholesale
price floor of about 70 cents per song. Sixth, all defendants refuse to do business with eMusic,
the #2 Internet Music retailer. Seventh, in or about May 2005, all defendants raised wholesale
12
prices from about $0.65 per song to $0.70 per song. This price increase was enforced by MFNs.3
More importantly, the following allegations, taken together, place the parallel conduct “in
a context that raises a suggestion of a preceding agreement, not merely parallel conduct that
could just as well be independent action.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557. First, defendants control
over 80% of Digital Music sold to end purchasers in the United States. See 7 Phillip E. Areeda
and Herbert Hovenkamp, Antitrust Law (hereinafter “Areeda & Hovenkamp”) § 1431a (2d ed.
2003) (“[E]mpirical studies considering many industries have suggested that noncompetitive
pricing [that may be the result of price coordination] is likely to appear when the four leading
firms account for some 50 to 80 percent of the market.”). Second, one industry commentator
noted that “nobody in their right mind” would want to use MusicNet or pressplay, suggesting that
some form of agreement among defendants would have been needed to render the enterprises
profitable. See id. § 1415b (“Some acts, or failures to act, cannot be profitably continued unless
rivals behave in parallel.”); In re Flat Glass Antitrust Litig., 385 F.3d 350, 360-361 (3d Cir.
3
Because the proposed amendment to paragraph ninety-nine of the SCAC contained,
along with the remainder of the complaint, “enough fact to raise a reasonable expectation that
discovery will reveal evidence of illegal agreement,” Twombly, 555 U.S. at 556, the district court
erred in denying the motion to amend on the ground of futility. See Kassner v. 2nd Ave.
Delicatessen Inc., 496 F.3d 229, 244 (2d Cir. 2007). Therefore, we include the allegations
contained in proposed paragraph ninety-nine within our discussion of the SCAC as a whole. In
so doing, we reject defendants’ argument that the proposed amendment would have been futile
because it alleged that prices rose in or about May 2005, but costs declined four years earlier, in
2001. As can be seen above, paragraph seventy-one of the original complaint alleged that initial
costs of distributing Internet Music fell because the price of distributing CDs accounted for costs
such as copying the compact discs, producing the CD case, and labor, all of which were
eliminated in distributing Internet Music. In contrast, the proposed amendment to paragraph
ninety-nine alleged that by May 2005 the costs of distributing Internet Music had fallen because
the digitization costs of the initial Internet cataloging had been completed and technological
improvements (including increased computer processing power) had reduced the remaining costs
of digitizing new releases. These are not the same costs that are alleged to have decreased in
paragraph seventy-one of the original complaint.
13
2004) (“Evidence that the defendant acted contrary to its interests means evidence of conduct that
would be irrational assuming that the defendant operated in a competitive market. In a
competitive industry, for example, a firm would cut its price with the hope of increasing its
market share if its competitors were setting prices above marginal costs.”). Third, the quote from
Edgar Bronfman, the current CEO of WMG, suggests that pressplay was formed expressly as an
effort to stop the “continuing devaluation of music.”
Fourth, defendants attempted to hide their MFNs because they knew they would attract
antitrust scrutiny. For example, EMI and MusicNet’s MFN, which assured that EMI’s core terms
would be no less favorable than Bertelsmann’s or WMG’s, was contained in a secret side letter.
“EMI CEO Rob Glaser decided to put the MFN in a secret side letter because ‘there are
legal/antitrust reasons why it would be bad idea to have MFN clauses in any, or certainly all, of
these agreements.” SCAC ¶ 95. According to the executive director of the Digital Music
Association, seller-side MFNs are “inherently price-increasing and anticompetitive.” SCAC ¶
97.
Fifth, whereas eMusic charges $0.25 per song, defendants’ wholesale price is about $0.70
per song. See 7 Areeda & Hovenkamp § 1415b (“[O]ne cannot profitably increase its price
above that charged by rivals unless they follow the price-raiser’s lead.”). Sixth, defendants’
price-fixing is the subject of a pending investigation by the New York State Attorney General
and two separate investigations by the Department of Justice. Finally, defendants raised
wholesale prices from about $0.65 per song to $0.70 per song in or about May 2005, even though
earlier that year defendants’ costs of providing Internet Music had decreased substantially due to
completion of the initial digital cataloging of all Internet Music and technological improvements
14
that reduced the costs of digitizing new releases. See Richard A. Posner, Antitrust Law 88 (2d
ed. 2001) (“Simultaneous price increases . . . unexplained by any increases in cost may therefore
be good evidence of the initiation of a price-fixing scheme.”).
This complaint does not resemble those our sister circuits have held fail to state a claim
under Twombly. See, e.g., Rick-Mik Enters., Inc. v. Equilon Enters. LLC, 532 F.3d 963, 975-976
(9th Cir. 2008) (dismissing Section 1 price fixing complaint under Twombly where complaint
alleged only that defendant conspired with “numerous” banks to fix the price of credit and debit
card processing fees and received kickbacks from “numerous” banks as consideration for its
unlawful agreement); Kendall v. Visa U.S.A., Inc., 518 F.3d 1042, 1048-50 (9th Cir. 2008)
(where plaintiffs alleged no facts to support their theory that defendant banks conspired or agreed
with each other, dismissing Section 1 claim because plaintiffs pleaded only legal conclusions,
and “failed to plead the necessary evidentiary facts to support those conclusions”).
Defendants’ arguments that plaintiffs have failed to state a claim are without merit.
Defendants first argue that a plaintiff seeking damages under Section 1 of the Sherman act must
allege facts that “tend[] to exclude independent self-interested conduct as an explanation for
defendants’ parallel behavior.” Appellee’s Br. 15-17. This is incorrect. Although the Twombly
court acknowledged that for purposes of summary judgment a plaintiff must present evidence that
tends to exclude the possibility of independent action, 550 U.S. at 554, and that the district court
below had held that plaintiffs must allege additional facts that tended to exclude independent self-
interested conduct, id. at 552, it specifically held that, to survive a motion to dismiss, plaintiffs
need only “enough factual matter (taken as true) to suggest that an agreement was made,” id. at
556; see also 2 Areeda & Hovenkamp § 307d1 (3d ed. 2007) (“[T]he Supreme Court did not hold
15
that the same standard applies to a complaint and a discovery record . . . . The ‘plausibly
suggesting’ threshold for a conspiracy complaint remains considerably less than the ‘tends to rule
out the possibility’ standard for summary judgment.”).
Defendants next argue that Twombly requires that a plaintiff identify the specific time,
place, or person related to each conspiracy allegation. This is also incorrect. The Twombly court
noted, in dicta, that had the claim of agreement in that case not rested on the parallel conduct
described in the complaint, “we doubt that the . . . references to an agreement among the [Baby
Bells] would have given the notice required by Rule 8 . . . [because] the pleadings mentioned no
specific time, place, or person involved in the alleged conspiracies.” 550 at 565 n.10. In this
case, as in Twombly, the claim of agreement rests on the parallel conduct described in the
complaint. Therefore, plaintiffs were not required to mention a specific time, place or person
involved in each conspiracy allegation.
Defendants then argue that inferring a conspiracy from the facts alleged is unreasonable
because plaintiffs’ allegations “are the very same claims that were thoroughly investigated and
rejected by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice,” Appellee’s Br. 17-18, which
closed its inquiry in December 2003 and publicly announced that it had uncovered no evidence
that the joint ventures had harmed competition or consumers of digital music. Even if we could
consider this evidence on a motion to dismiss, defendants cite no case to support the proposition
that a civil antitrust complaint must be dismissed because a criminal investigation undertaken by
the Department of Justice found no evidence of conspiracy. Second, this argument neglects the
fact that the complaint alleges that the Department of Justice has, since 2003, launched two new
investigations into whether defendants engaged in collusion and price fixing and whether
16
defendants misled the Department about the formation and operation of MusicNet and pressplay.
The only one of defendants’ contentions that merits more than a brief discussion is the
impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Texaco Inc. v. Dagher, 547 U.S. 1 (2006). That case
concerned a joint venture formed by Texaco and Shell Oil to completely consolidate their
operations in the western United States. The joint venture, Equilon, produced significant cost
savings in production and marketing, see Dagher v. Saudi Refining, Inc., 369 F.3d 1108, 1111
(9th Cir. 2004), rev’d, 547 U.S. 1 (2006), and ended competition between Texaco and Shell Oil
altogether in the domestic refining and selling of gasoline. Because Texaco and Shell Oil’s
market share exceeded twenty-five percent, id., the formation of Equilon was approved by
consent decree by the Federal Trade Commission, as well as by state attorneys general in
California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. Dagher, 547 U.S. at 4. Plaintiffs sued, alleging
that in allowing Equilon to determine the price of gasoline, Texaco and Shell Oil violated the per
se rule against price fixing under § 1 of the Sherman Act. The district court granted summary
judgment to Texaco and Shell Oil, holding that the rule of reason, rather than a per se rule,
governed the claim, and because plaintiffs eschewed the rule of reason analysis, judgment was
appropriate as a matter of law. Id.4 The Supreme Court agreed, holding that Equilon’s pricing
policy was not a price-fixing agreement between competitors, because Texaco and Shell Oil did
4
A short explanation of per se illegality versus the rule of reason is in order. Per se
liability is reserved “for only those agreements that are so plainly anticompetitive that no
elaborate study of the industry is needed to establish their illegality.” Dagher, 547 U.S. at 5(internal quotation marks omitted). Price-fixing agreements between competitors are generally
per se unlawful, meaning they are prohibited despite the reasonableness of the particular prices
agreed upon. Id; see also 7 Areeda & Hovenkamp § 1509a (2d ed. 2003). In contrast, under the
rule of reason analysis, which presumptively applies to Section 1 claims, “antitrust plaintiffs
must demonstrate that a particular contract or combination is in fact unreasonable and
anticompetitive before it will be found unlawful.” Daghher, 547 U.S. at 5.
17
not compete with one another in the relevant market (the sale of gasoline). Therefore, the per se
rule against price fixing did not apply. Id. at 5-6. In its holding, the Supreme Court presumed
that Equilon was a lawful joint venture, because its formation had been approved by federal and
state regulators and plaintiffs did not argue that it was a sham. Id. at 6 n.1. Finally, the Supreme
Court noted that despite the lawfulness of the joint venture plaintiffs could have, but did not,
challenge Equilon’s pricing policy under the rule of reason. Id. at 7.
Dagher does not support the dismissal of the complaint in this case. First, although the
district court below stated that plaintiffs did not challenge the joint ventures here, the complaint
makes clear that plaintiffs do challenge the joint ventures. See, e.g., SCAC ¶¶ 67, 72-73, 76, 78,
81-83, 85. In the legal memorandum relied upon by the district court for the proposition that
plaintiffs did not challenge the joint ventures, plaintiffs wrote that while “it is not the existence or
creation of these joint ventures that form the basis of the [p]laintiffs’ allegations,” defendants
used the joint ventures “as a means to implement their anticompetitive agreements” and to
“facilitat[e] anticompetitive . . . horizontal combinations.” See Pls.’ Consolidated Mem. of Law
in Opp’n to Defs.’ Supplemental Mem. of Law 10-11. The memorandum also called MusicNet
and pressplay “mere puppets of [the] [d]efendants.” See id. at 11. The district court implicitly
acknowledged that plaintiffs did challenge the joint ventures when it held that plaintiffs’
allegation that the joint ventures were shams was conclusory and implausible. Plaintiffs continue
to challenge the joint ventures on appeal, and defendants do not contend that MusicNet or
pressplay were explicitly approved by state or federal regulators. Therefore, the Dagher Court’s
presumption that Equilon was lawful because its formation had been approved by federal and
state regulators and plaintiffs did not argue that it was a sham, 547 U.S. at 6 n.1, is not applicable
18
here.5 Second, even if we were to presume that MusicNet and pressplay were lawful, which we
do not, plaintiffs would still be free to challenge their activities pursuant to the rule of reason.
Dagher, 547 U.S. at 6 n.1. The complaint alleges that the activities of the joint ventures actually
were anticompetitive and unreasonable, SCAC ¶ 126, and, unlike in Dagher, plaintiffs in this
case have not “eschewed” a rule of reason analysis. Similarly, the complaint contains many
allegations of conduct that took place outside of the joint ventures, and are therefore not affected
by Dagher. For all of these reasons, Dagher does not support dismissal of the SCAC.
Finally, defendants claim that the conduct alleged in the complaint “would be entirely
consistent with independent, though parallel, action.” Appellee’s Br. 20. Under Twombly,
allegations of parallel conduct that could “just as well be independent action” are not sufficient to
state a claim. 550 U.S. at 557. However, in this case plaintiffs have alleged behavior that would
plausibly contravene each defendant’s self-interest “in the absence of similar behavior by rivals.”
5
We note that some commentators continue to believe that Dagher does not foreclose the
application of the per se rule against price-fixing in the case of a lawful joint venture where the
price fixing itself is not related to the purpose of the joint venture or the joint venture does not
result in significant economic benefits. See Areeda & Hovenkamp 2009 Supplement § 2132
(arguing that if General Motors and Toyota were to form a joint venture for the production of
hybrid car engines, but then place the engines in cars they designed and produced separately, the
Supreme Court would not permit them to fix the prices of the finished cars as part of the lawful
joint venture); see also 12 Areeda & Hovemkamp § 2004a (2d ed. 2005) (noting that the per se
rule against price fixing “applies virtually without exception when the price fix is ‘naked’ in the
sense that it does not accompany any significant integration of research and development,
production or distribution. . . . As a general matter, price fixing is tolerated only in the case of the
joint venture producing significant, output-increasing efficiencies, and where the price fixing
itself can be shown to be essential to these social gains.”); 11 Areeda & Hovenkamp § 1912c (2d
ed. 2005) (explaining that the rule of reason is applied to a joint venture’s horizontal restraint
when the joint venture seems to be productive or reasonable on its face and the particular
challenged agreement seems to be reasonably necessary to the purpose of the venture). In this
case, the SCAC obviously does not allege that MusicNet or pressplay were economically
efficient in integrating research, development, production, or distribution or that price fixing was
reasonably necessary to any social gain the ventures may have produced.
19
7 Areeda & Hovenkamp § 1415a (2d ed. 2003); see also Posner, supra, at 100. For example, it
would not be in each individual defendant’s self-interest to sell Internet Music at prices, and with
DRMs, that were so unpopular as to ensure that “nobody in their right mind” would want to
purchase the music, unless the defendant’s rivals were doing the same. For these reasons we
hold that the SCAC states a claim under Twombly.6
CONCLUSION
The Second Consolidated Amendment Complaint contains “plausible grounds to infer an
agreement.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556. We therefore hold that the district court erred in
dismissing the complaint. The case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
6
On appeal, three parent-company defendants, Bertelsmann, Inc., Sony Corporation of
America, and Time Warner Inc., argue that even if the SCAC states a claim under Twombly, it
fails to state a claim against them because plaintiffs allege no basis for piercing the corporate
veil. Because the district court did not reach this question and the parties devote three total pages
to it in their briefs, we remand to allow the district court to consider it in the first instance.
20
Starr v. Sony BMG
Docket No. 08-5637
JON O. NEWMAN, Circuit Judge, concurring:
I concur in Judge Katzmann’s comprehensive opinion, but add these
additional words to explore a perplexing aspect of the Supreme Court’s
decision in Twombley v. Bell Atlantic, 550 U.S. 544 (2007). As is
well known, the Court there ruled insufficient to survive a motion to
dismiss a complaint that endeavored to allege a price-fixing agreement
in violation of section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1. The
complaint had relied primarily on an allegation of the defendants’
parallel conduct.
The perplexing aspect of the Court’s opinion is contained in the
very first paragraph of the Court’s substantive discussion. The Court
there stated:
While a showing of parallel “business behavior is admissible
circumstantial evidence from which the fact finder may infer
agreement,” it falls short of “conclusively establish[ing]
agreement or . . . itself constitut[ing] a Sherman Act
offense.
Twombley, 550 U.S. at 553 (emphasis added) (citing Theatre Enterprises
v. Paramount Film Distributing Corp., 346 U.S. 537, 540-41 (1954))
(alterations and ellipsis in original).1
If, as the Court states in the first part of this sentence, a
1
The basis for perplexity is not lessened by the Court’s
subsequent statement that “[i]t makes sense to say, therefore, that an
allegation of parallel conduct and a bare assertion of conspiracy will
not suffice,” Twombley, 550 U.S. at 556, apparently meaning will not
suffice to defeat a motion to dismiss a complaint.
fact-finder is entitled to infer agreement from parallel conduct, one
may wonder why a complaint alleging such conduct does not survive a
motion to dismiss. The answer is surely not supplied by the remainder
of the Court’s sentence. That portion states the unexceptional
proposition that parallel conduct alone is not conclusive evidence of
an agreement to fix prices. To support that proposition, the Court
cites Theatre Enterprises. But that case was an appeal by an
antitrust plaintiff whose complaint had survived a motion to dismiss.
Indeed, that plaintiff had been permitted to present its evidence to
a jury, only to have the jury reject on the merits the claim of a
section 1 violation. The plaintiff sought review on the ground that
the trial court had erred in not granting a motion for a directed
verdict in the plaintiff’s favor. See Theatre Enterprises, 346 U.S. at
539. The Supreme Court understandably found no error. See id. at 539-
42. In Twombley, the Court noted the extraordinary claim that the
Theatre Enterprise plaintiff had made. “An antitrust conspiracy
plaintiff with evidence showing nothing more than parallel conduct is
not entitled to a directed verdict.” Twombley, 550 U.S. at 554(emphasis added).
The fact that an allegation of parallel conduct was held
insufficient to require a directed verdict in the plaintiff’s favor is
hardly a basis for ruling that such an allegation is insufficient to
survive a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim on which
-2-
relief may be granted.
In view of the Court’s initial observation in Twombley that
parallel conduct is sufficient to support a permissible inference of
an agreement, the reason for the rejection of the complaint in
Twombley must arise from something other than the plaintiff’s reliance
on parallel conduct. That reason is not difficult to find. It is the
context in which the defendants’ parallel conduct occurred. “[W]hen
allegations of parallel conduct are set out in order to make a § 1
claim, they must be placed in a context that raises a suggestion of a
preceding agreement, not merely parallel conduct that could just as
well be independent action.” Id. at 557.
The context in Twombley was the aftermath of the divestiture of
At&T’s local telephone service, resulting in the creation of seven
Regional Bell Operating Companies, the so-called “Baby Bells” or
Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (“ILECs”). See id. at 549.
Originally restricted to providing local telephone service, the ILECs
were later permitted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L.
No. 104-104, 110 Stat. 56 (Feb. 8, 1996), to enter the long-distance
market upon compliance with conditions concerning the opportunity for
competitive local exchange carriers (“CLECs”) to make use of an ILEC’s
network. See Twombley, 550 U.S. at 549.
In that context, it was entirely understandable for the Court to
cast a jaundiced eye on the claim that the parallel conduct of these
-3-
newly created ILECs would suffice to permit an inference of agreement.
As the Court observed:
[The parallel conduct of the ILECs] was not suggestive of
conspiracy, not if history teaches anything. In a
traditionally unregulated industry with low barriers to
entry, sparse competition among large firms dominating
separate geographical segments of the market could very well
signify illegal agreement, but here we have an obvious
alternative explanation. In the decade preceding the 1996
Act and well before that, monopoly was the norm in
telecommunications, not the exception. The ILECs were born
in that world, doubtless liked the world the way it was, and
surely knew the adage about him who lives by the sword.
Hence, a natural explanation for the noncompetition alleged
is that the former Government-sanctioned monopolists were
sitting tight, expecting their neighbors to do the same
thing.
Id. at 567-68.
Two years after Twombley, the Court emphasized its view that
whether a bare allegation of illegality would suffice to withstand a
motion to dismiss depends on the context in which the allegation is
made. “Determining whether a complaint states a plausible claim for
relief will, as the Court of Appeals observed, be a context-specific
task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial
experience and common sense.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1950
(2009).
I believe it would be a serious mistake to think that the Court
has categorically rejected the availability of an inference of an
unlawful section 1 agreement from parallel conduct. Even in those
contexts in which an allegation of parallel conduct will not suffice
-4-
to take an antitrust plaintiff’s case to the jury, it will sometimes
suffice to overcome a motion to dismiss and permit some discovery,
perhaps leaving the issue for later resolution on a motion for summary
judgment.
In the pending case, as Judge Katzmann has carefully
demonstrated, the context in which the defendants’ alleged parallel
conduct occurred, amplified by specific factual allegations making
plausible an inference of agreement, suffices to render the allegation
of a section 1 violation sufficient to withstand a motion to dismiss.
-5-