In Sunbeam Television Corp. v. Neilsen Media Research Inc., the plaintiff, a Florida television station operator, sued Neilsen Media Research Inc., alleging that Nielsen violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, and the Florida equivalent, by abusing its monopoly in the television ratings industry. Specifically, Sunbeam alleged that Nielsen discouraged potential competitors from entering the television ratings market, and then sharply increased its prices to TV stations for ratings services and forced them to use a flawed data collection system. Sunbeam further alleged that Nielsen thwarted whould-be competitors by 1) requiring customers to sign up for contracts lasting for four to seven years or face steep fines; and 2) staggering the termination dates of its major client service contracts to prevent competitors from signing up multiple new customers at once.