496
Scalia, J., dissenting
we have never before premised the application of antitrust doctrine on the lowest common denominator of consumer.
The Court attempts to counter this theoretical point with a theory of its own. It says that there are "information costs"—the costs and inconvenience to the consumer of acquiring and processing life-cycle pricing data for Kodak machines—that "could create a less responsive connection between service and parts prices and equipment sales." Ante, at 473. But this truism about the functioning of markets for sophisticated equipment cannot create "market power" of concern to the antitrust laws where otherwise there is none. "Information costs," or, more accurately, gaps in the availability and quality of consumer information, pervade real-world markets; and because consumers generally make do with "rough cut" judgments about price in such circumstances, in virtually any market there are zones within which otherwise competitive suppliers may overprice their products without losing appreciable market share. We have never suggested that the principal players in a market with such commonplace informational deficiencies (and, thus, bands of apparent consumer pricing indifference) exercise market power in any sense relevant to the antitrust laws. "While [such] factors may generate 'market power' in some abstract sense, they do not generate the kind of market power that justifies condemnation of tying." Jefferson Parish, 466 U. S., at 27; see, e. g., Town Sound and Custom Tops, Inc. v. Chrysler Motors Corp., supra.
Respondents suggest that, even if the existence of inter-brand competition prevents Kodak from raising prices generally in its single-brand aftermarkets, there remain certain consumers who are necessarily subject to abusive Kodak pricing behavior by reason of their being "locked in" to their investments in Kodak machines. The Court agrees; indeed, it goes further by suggesting that even a general policy of supracompetitive aftermarket prices might be profitable over the long run because of the "lock-in" phenomenon. "[A]
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