In Re: Da Vinci Surgical Robot Antitrust Litigation
Opinion
Trial Court Opinion
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
LARKIN COMMUNITY HOSPITAL, et Case No. 21-cv-03825-VC al.,
Plaintiffs, ORDER DENYING MOTION TO
DISMISS
v. Re: Dkt. No.
INTUITIVE SURGICAL INC.,
Defendant.
The plaintiffs in this case, a group of hospitals, allege that Intuitive Surgical has violated the antitrust laws by preventing its customers from turning to third parties when their surgical robots or robot instruments stop working. This is not the first time this Court has been presented with these allegations: a potential competitor to Intuitive Surgical raised a subset of these issues in a related lawsuit, all of which survived a motion to dismiss. See Surgical Instrument Service Company, Inc. v. Intuitive Surgical, Inc., 2021 WL 5474898 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 23, 2021).1 Intuitive Surgical’s motion to dismiss this lawsuit is denied for the same reasons. 1. As Intuitive Surgical acknowledged in its reply brief, the bulk of the arguments advanced in its motion to dismiss were rejected by this Court in Surgical Instrument Service. First, the plaintiffs have “plausibly alleged the existence of distinct product markets”—both with respect to the…