50
Syllabus
mental action" is "not at all affected by any anticompetitive purpose [the actor] may have had." Id., at 140. Thus, neither Noerr immunity nor its sham exception turns on subjective intent alone. See, e. g., Allied Tube & Conduit Corp. v. Indian Head, Inc., 486 U. S. 492, 503. Rather, to be a "sham," litigation must meet a two-part definition. First, the lawsuit must be objectively baseless in the sense that no reasonable litigant could realistically expect success on the merits. Only if challenged litigation is objectively meritless may a court examine the litigant's subjective motivation. Under this second part of the definition a court should focus on whether the baseless suit conceals "an attempt to interfere directly" with a competitor's business relationships, Noerr, supra, at 144, through the "use [of] the governmental process— as opposed to the outcome of that process—as an anticompetitive weapon," Columbia v. Omni Outdoor Advertising, Inc., 499 U. S. 365, 380. This two-tiered process requires a plaintiff to disprove the challenged lawsuit's legal viability before the court will entertain evidence of the suit's economic viability. Pp. 55-61. 2. Because PRE failed to establish the objective prong of Noerr's sham exception, summary judgment was properly granted to Columbia. A finding that an antitrust defendant claiming Noerr immunity had probable cause to sue compels the conclusion that a reasonable litigant in the defendant's position could realistically expect success on the merits of the challenged lawsuit. Here, the lower courts correctly found probable cause for Columbia's suit. Since there was no dispute over the predicate facts of the underlying legal proceedings—Columbia had the exclusive right to show its copyrighted motion pictures publicly— the court could decide probable cause as a matter of law. A court could reasonably conclude that Columbia's action was an objectively plausible effort to enforce rights, since, at the time the District Court entered summary judgment, there was no clear copyright law on videodisc rental activities; since Columbia might have won its copyright suit in two other Circuits; and since Columbia would have been entitled to press a novel claim, even in the absence of supporting authority, if a similarly situated reasonable litigant could have perceived some likelihood of success. Pp. 62-65. 3. The Court of Appeals properly refused PRE's request for further discovery on the economic circumstances of the underlying copyright litigation, because such matters were rendered irrelevant by the objective legal reasonableness of Columbia's infringement suit. Pp. 65-66. 944 F. 2d 1525, affirmed.
Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and White, Blackmun, Scalia, Kennedy, and Souter, JJ., joined.
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