The U.S. Supreme Court case Professional Real Estate Investors, Inc., et al. v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., et al., 1992 revolved around the issue of antitrust laws and patent litigation. The plaintiffs, Professional Real Estate Investors (PREI), filed a lawsuit against Columbia Pictures claiming that they had violated antitrust laws by filing a baseless copyright infringement suit against them in an attempt to monopolize the film industry market for classic American films on videocassette and cable television systems. However, the court ruled in favor of Columbia Pictures stating that as long as their copyright claim was reasonable or objectively valid regardless of any subjective intent to harm PREI through this litigation process, it cannot be considered sham litigation which would have been necessary for an antitrust violation claim to stand up in court.

In the dissenting opinion for Professional Real Estate Investors, Inc. v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Justice Stevens argued that the majority's decision to apply a two-part test in determining whether or not an antitrust lawsuit was baseless and therefore constituted sham litigation was overly restrictive. He contended that this approach failed to consider other factors such as intent and potential harm caused by frivolous lawsuits which could be used as competitive weapons. Furthermore, he disagreed with the majority's view that only unsuccessful lawsuits could be considered shams under Noerr-Pennington doctrine (which protects efforts to influence public officials). Instead, he believed any suit filed without genuine legal merit should qualify regardless of its outcome.