In 1895, the Supreme Court handed down a judgement in the case of United States v. E.C. Knight that effectively neutered the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Passed in 1890, the Sherman Act was designed to weed out oversized businesses that blocked the "natural" flow of competition. Though the act was invoked that same year to force the break-up of Standard Oil, it was generally regarded as a limp piece of legislation that did little to stem the rise of trusts.
However, that didn't stop big business from mounting charges to severely limit the scope of the Sherman Act. And, in the E.C. Knight case, the Supreme Court sided with the argument that the anti-trust legislation should distinguish between commercial and manufacturing enterprises and, thus, only apply to companies engaged in interstate trade.
In turn, a company such as the sugar trust at the heart of the case, which "restricted" its business to manufacturing within a single state, was deemed legal -- despite squashing any semblance of competition in the sugar-refining industry.
Whatever the legal merits of this decision, it derailed any efforts to put a lid on monopolies, until the passage of the Clayton Act in 1916.
Incidentally, on July 15,1994, the U.S. government filed a complaint charging the Microsoft Corporation, the world's largest software developer, with violating Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Source: History.com
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