Real Estate Investors, Inc. v. Columbia Pictures Indus., Inc., 508 U.S. 49, 113 S.Ct. 1920, 123 L.Ed.2d 611 (1993)). See also Dixon v. International Broth. of Police Officers, 504 F.3d 73, 86 (1st Cir.2007). Defendants argue, correctly in the court’s view, that there is no reason these same principles would not also apply in the present context, where plaintiff seeks to hold defendants liable for exercising their First Amendment right to initiate litigation. See Sosa v. DIRECTV, Inc., 437 F.3d 923, 931 (9th Cir.2006) (“[W]e conclude that the Noerr-Pennington doctrine stands for a generic rule of statutory construction, applicable to any statutory interpretation that could implicate the rights protected by the Petition Clause”) (citing White v. Lee, 227 F.3d 1214, 1231 (9th Cir.2000) (<HOLDING>)); Zemenco, Inc. v. Developers Diversified
holding that state official english law violated the first amendment and the fourteenth amendments guarantee of equal protection under a strict scrutiny analysis because it impinges upon both the fundamental right to participate equally in the political process and the right to petition the government for redress holding that noerrpennington doctrine exempts from antitrust liability any legitimate use of the political process by private individuals even if their intent is to eliminate competition holding before be  k that because it is based on and implements the first amendment right to petition the noerrpennington doctrine is not limited to the antitrust context but applies equally in all contexts holding that an individual is immune from antitrust liability for exercising first amendment right to petition the government holding that there must be a causal connection between the alleged antitrust violation and the antitrust injury for there to be antitrust standing