In re Extended Stay Hotel Antitrust Litigation
- Jeffrey White
- 4:24-cv-09060
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
Counsel of record per CourtListener. Firm names are approximate and have been consolidated across spelling variants.
In re Extended Stay Antitrust Litigation: Judge White denied SAS Institute’s motion to dismiss, finding allegations showed more involvement than in an earlier related proceeding.
The ruling directly affects SAS Institute, Inc., and the plaintiffs who are pursuing the antitrust claims on behalf of themselves and a proposed class. It denies only SAS’s separate motion to dismiss; the opinion says the court would address the claims’ overall sufficiency in a later order on the joint motion to dismiss.
What happened
In In re Extended Stay Hotel Antitrust Litigation, plaintiffs allege that SAS Institute, Inc., IDeaS, and five hotel companies conspired to fix extended-stay hotel room prices using a pricing product called G3 RMS.
SAS argued that plaintiffs had not alleged enough facts connecting SAS to the alleged conspiracy. The court compared these allegations with an earlier related proceeding, where it found that similar allegations did not show SAS’s continuing involvement or contact with the hotel companies.
Judge Jeffrey S. White denied SAS’s separate motion to dismiss. The court found that the allegations here included additional details about SAS’s partnership with IDeaS, technical support, employee statements, and certification of G3 RMS users; the court said it would address the overall sufficiency of the claims in an order on the defendants’ joint motion to dismiss.
The detailed version
- In re Extended Stay Hotel Antitrust Litigation · No. 4:24-cv-09060
- Jeffrey White
- Sept. 15, 2026
Background
Plaintiffs brought the case on behalf of themselves and a proposed class. They allege that SAS Institute, Inc. (“SAS”), IDeaS, and five hotel companies conspired to fix prices in the extended-stay hotel room rental market by using the same pricing-algorithm product, G3 RMS, to set room rates and occupancy levels. Plaintiffs allege that IDeaS created, marketed, and sold G3 RMS in collaboration with SAS.
Plaintiffs assert three claims under Section 1 of the Sherman Act: a hub-and-spoke conspiracy involving SAS, IDeaS, and the hotel companies; unlawful sharing of prices; and use of vertical agreements to align pricing.
SAS’s Motion
SAS filed a separate motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), which tests whether a complaint alleges enough facts to state a legally sufficient claim. SAS argued that plaintiffs had not alleged sufficient facts showing SAS’s involvement in the alleged conspiracy.
The court noted that, at this stage, it assumes the complaint’s factual allegations are true. A complaint must contain enough factual matter to make liability reasonably plausible; parallel conduct and a bare assertion of conspiracy are not enough to suggest that an agreement was made.
Court’s Analysis
The court compared this case with its ruling on SAS’s motion in a prior related proceeding. In that earlier round, the court found that the allegations showed only that SAS provided one part of the revenue-management product and did not show SAS’s continuing involvement with the hotel companies or other connection with them.
The court found that the allegations in this case included additional details. Plaintiffs alleged that a press release described a development partnership among Hilton Worldwide, IDeaS, and SAS as critical to G3 RMS’s success. They also alleged that IDeaS enabled the exchange of sensitive commercial information among the hotel companies with SAS’s technical assistance and support.
The complaint further alleged that SAS employees discussed joint work with IDeaS, including a technology solution for hotel profit optimization and joint offerings. It also alleged that SAS’s vice president of advanced analytics research and development discussed SAS and IDeaS’s innovations in connection with a pilot program, and that SAS issued badges to certified users of G3 RMS.
Disposition
The court concluded that these allegations provided more detail about SAS’s alleged involvement than the allegations in the prior related proceeding and were distinguishable from them. The court therefore denied SAS’s separate motion to dismiss. It stated that it would analyze whether the allegations were sufficient to state a claim in its order on the defendants’ joint motion to dismiss. The opinion does not state the disposition of that joint motion.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.