## Facts

- Timken Roller Bearing Co., an Ohio manufacturer of antifriction bearings, entered into long-running agreements with British Timken, Ltd. and Société Anonyme Française Timken (French Timken).
- The agreements, originating as early as 1909 and later modified and renewed, divided world markets for antifriction bearings.
- In 1928, Timken and an English businessman organized French Timken; thereafter the three companies maintained “business agreements” governing manufacture and sales and authorizing foreign use of the “Timken” trademark.
- The agreements allocated sales territories among the companies and fixed prices on products sold by one company in the territory of another.
- The companies coordinated to protect each other’s markets, eliminate outside competition, and participated in cartel arrangements restricting imports to and exports from the United States.
- The United States filed a civil antitrust action seeking to restrain violations of the Sherman Act based on combinations and conspiracies restraining interstate and foreign commerce.
- After a lengthy trial, the district court made detailed factual findings, found Sherman Act violations, and entered a broad injunction aimed at preventing future violations.
- Timken appealed directly to the Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court’s material findings of fact were clearly erroneous under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a).
2. Whether the territorial allocation, price-fixing, and market-protection arrangements among Timken and the foreign companies violated the Sherman Act despite being characterized as a joint venture or trademark licensing system.
3. Whether foreign-trade conditions justified limiting or declining enforcement of the Sherman Act against the challenged agreements.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court accepted the district court’s material findings as not clearly erroneous under Rule 52(a).
- The Court held that the “business agreements” constituted unlawful restraints under §§ 1 and 3 of the Sherman Act.
- The Court rejected defenses based on joint venture characterization, common ownership or control, and trademark licensing.
- The Court rejected the argument that foreign-trade conditions warranted non-enforcement of the Sherman Act.
- The Court modified and affirmed the district court’s decree, leaving liability intact while adjusting aspects of the injunction.

## Legal Principles

- Agreements among legally separate firms to suppress competition—through territorial division, price fixing, and coordinated exclusion—violate the Sherman Act even if described as a joint venture.
- Common ownership or control of contracting corporations does not exempt coordinated market-division or price-fixing arrangements from antitrust liability.
- Trademark licensing cannot be used to implement or conceal restraints of trade; trademark provisions do not legalize agreements whose central purpose is market allocation and price control.
- The Sherman Act applies to restraints affecting U.S. commerce notwithstanding policy arguments based on foreign-trade conditions.

## Conclusion

The Court held that Timken’s coordinated international arrangements dividing markets and fixing prices were unlawful restraints of trade under the Sherman Act, and it largely upheld an injunction against future violations while modifying the decree’s scope in part.


Timken Roller Bearing Co. v. United States, 341 U.S. 593 (1951)