Up until that time, software was bundled with hardware by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Data, Digital Equipment Corporation[citation needed]. When a customer bought a microcomputer, the smallest computer on the market at the time, the computer had no pre-installed software but required an installation engineer to use OEM. Computer hardware companies not only place their software, they also place the hardware in required locations in refrigerated spaces called computer rooms. Most companies have software on the books for $0 and can't claim it as an asset (which was similar to the financing pop in those days). When Data introduced Data Nova, a company called Digidyne wanted to leverage its own hardware clones for the operating system. Data generally refuses to license software (which is difficult to do since it is against the books as a free asset) and claims they are "bundled". The Supreme Court precedent known as Digidyne v. Data General was in 1985. The Supreme Court decided to let Station 9, and Universal Data was ultimately forced into licensing the operating system software because it was excluded from the licensing and restricted to hazmat hardware which was an illegal tie-in. [5] Soon after, the company released the source code for free, [citation needed] and Microsoft was born to do so. Unable to afford the loss of legal fees, General Data was eventually taken over by Essence Corporation. The Supreme Court's decision could potentially impact the value and purchase of software and software patents. It was almost time to move in protest. A few people in the industry believe that anyone will profit from it (free publicity) more than other companies. Microsoft and Apple can thus cash in on "soft" products. It’s hard to imagine today that people once considered software to be worthless machines. There are many successful companies today selling only software products, but there are still many common software licensing issues due to design complexity and poor documentation, resulting in patent trolling.