ANDERSON, Circuit Judge:
Appellant Billy Baxter, Inc., is a Pennsylvania corporation organized in 1962 for the purpose of selling or otherwise granting franchises authorizing the production and bottling of a line of nonalcoholic carbonated beverages under the federally-registered trademark “Billy Baxter.” The beverages, which include club soda, quinine water, ginger ale, ginger beer, sarsaparilla, root beer, and “lime ’n quine” (quinine water containing lime), have been produced and sold locally in the Pittsburgh area by others since 1889, bearing the registered trademarks “Red Cross” and “Billy Baxter” since 1900 and 1921, respectively. In December of 1962, the appellant purchased the trademarks and secret beverage recipes, licensed the former owner to continue local production, and announced its intention to expand the availability of Billy Baxter products to new markets by franchising bottlers to manufacture and sell them.
Billy Baxter, Inc., admits that it played a circumscribed role in the subsequent limited expansion of Billy Baxter beverage product distribution, describing its business as “the purchase of beverage extracts and the sale of same to franchised bottlers, with related advertising and promotional activities.” From its office in Pittsburgh, Billy Baxter, Inc., bought various flavored extracts, which had been manufactured by others, and resold them to its franchised bottlers. The bottlers then manufactured the beverages by mixing these extracts with carbonated water, syrups, or other ingredients according to the specified secret formulae. The franchisee-bottlers sold the beverages in their geographic territories, remitting specified royalties to Billy Baxter, Inc., based on the number of cases of their products which they sold. The appellant franchisor had no plants or facilities other than its administrative offices in Pittsburgh and New York (where its president practices law); and in the normal course of business it “neither manufactured, bottled, distributed nor sold products” other than the extracts supplied to its franchisees.
Four bottlers were licensed as Billy Baxter franchisees between 1962 and 1964, serving parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, New Jersey and New York; and others also were approached and asked to test markets for the products. But Billy Baxter operations, which required that franchisees use a uniquely-shaped non-returnable bottle and distribute products which traditionally “sold at a higher-than-average cost,” did not flourish. The appellant’s gross income from sale of extracts and royalties, as well as “occasional” resale of some of its francisees’ bottled beverages, rose from some $18,000 during its first year to $45,500 in its second; but thereafter it declined precipitously, with three of the four bottlers ultimately relinquishing their franchises.
In 1966, Billy Baxter, Inc., commenced this action against the Coca-Cola Company and Canada Dry Corporation, Delaware corporations which manufacture various products and license bottlers to do the same, sweepingly alleging that they have violated various parts of the Sherman, Clayton, and Robinson-Patman Acts. It contended that these two firms restrained competition in the “non-alcoholic carbonated beverage industry” in the five aforementioned states by agreeing to “avoid genuine competition with each other’s primary product line.” It further charged that they “acted in concert * * * to exclude plaintiff from the normal channels of interstate commerce, and through discriminatory, unfair and unlawful price concessions, discounts, gifts and allowances directed specifically to plaintiff’s customers, induced them to exclude plaintiff’s products from their places of business.” The complaint alleged that these actions, followed by supplementary improper activities, injured Billy Baxter, Inc., by causing “lost profits” estimated at $500,000; and it sought this amount trebled as damages.
Thereafter both Coca-Cola and Canada Dry served written interrogatories on Billy Baxter, Inc.; and the appellant’s answers significantly narrowed the scope of the activities which were alleged to have caused harm to the franchisor’s business. Billy Baxter, Inc., explained that the alleged market division injured it because Canada Dry was able to concentrate economic power in the “mixer market,” using “advertising, price concessions, pricing of product and similar practices” to maintain market domination. But it added that these activities affected it specifically because of practices aimed at its “customers,” listing as known examples three Pittsburgh hotels, two distributors, and a cocktail lounge allegedly induced to cease purchasing Billy Baxter products. In fact, none of these was a customer of the appellant Billy Baxter, Inc. Instead, each was a retail outlet or distributor which had purchased beverages from one of the franchised bottlers, which in turn paid royalties to the appellant.
After both the filing of the appellees’ joint summary judgment motion and a special master’s report on a motion to strike certain interrogatories, in each of which it was suggested that Billy Baxter, Inc. lacked standing to sue as a franchisor for its own lost profits on its franchisees’ sales, appellant moved to amend both its complaint and its revealing answers to the interrogatories. It requested permission to file an amended pleading characterizing itself as a seller of bottled beverages purchased from its own franchised bottlers for resale, deleting its prior reference to “occasional” resales and describing the same two isolated sets of transactions as “substantial” retail sales. Nevertheless, the district court found that this proposed verbal change did not alter the fact that “[a]t no time was plaintiff any part of the marketing operations of its licensees.” Conclusory statements to the contrary were found to be without factual basis; and summary judgment was granted because Billy Baxter, Inc. was outside the “target area” of the alleged antitrust activities, the marketing of bottled beverages. Billy Baxter, Inc. v. Coca-Cola Co., 47 F.R.D. 345, 349-350 (S.D.N.Y.1969). We affirm.
Section 4 of the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. § 15, provides:
“That any person who shall be injured in his business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws may sue therefor * * * and shall recover threefold the damages by him sustained, and the cost of suit, including a reasonable attorney’s fee.”
The statutory requirement that treble damage suits be based on injuries which occur “by reason of” antitrust violations expressly restricts the right to sue under this section. There must be a causal connection between an antitrust violation and an injury sufficient for the trier of fact to establish that the violation was a “material cause” of or a “substantial factor” in the occurrence of damage. Continental Ore Co. v. Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., 370 U.S. 690, 702, 82 S.Ct. 1404, 8 L.Ed. 2d 777 (1962); Bigelow v. RKO Radio Pictures, 327 U.S. 251, 66 S.Ct. 574, 90 L.Ed. 652 (1946); Note, Standing to Sue for Treble Damages Under Section 4 of the Clayton Act, 64 Colum.L.Rev. 570, 575-6 (1964). And this connection must also link a specific form of illegal act to a plaintiff engaged in the sort of legitimate activities which the prohibition of this type of violation was clearly intended to protect. While any antitrust violation disrupts the competitive economy to some extent and creates entirely foreseeable ripples of injury which may be shown to reach individual employees, stockholders, or consumers, it has long been held that not all of these have the requisite standing to sue for treble damages and thereby take a leading role in the enforcement of the prohibition in question. See, e. g., Data Digests, Inc. v. Standard & Poor’s Corp., 43 F.R.D. 386 (S.D.N.Y.1967). The private action, intended as “an ever-present threat to deter anyone contemplating business behavior in violation of the antitrust laws,” Perma Life Mufflers, Inc. v. Int’l Parts Corp., 392 U.S. 134, 139, 88 S.Ct. 1981, 1984, 20 L.Ed.2d 982 (1968), can only serve as an effective deterrent if the courts are able to administer it with some degree of certainty. Contourless rules of causation would pose the threat of a parallel relaxation of the standard of business behavior enforced by the allowance of treble recovery. Consequently, a plaintiff must allege a causative link to his injury which is “direct” rather than “incidental” or which indicates that his business or property was in the “target area” of the defendant’s illegal act. SCM Corp. v. Radio Corp. of America, 407 F.2d 166 (2 Cir.), cert. denied 395 U.S. 943, 89 S.Ct. 2014, 23 L.Ed.2d 461 (1969); Productive Inventions, Inc. v. Trico Products Corp., 224 F.2d 678 (2 Cir. 1955), cert. denied 350 U.S. 936, 76 S.Ct. 301, 100 L.Ed. 818 (1956). These terms do not provide talismanie guides to decision, but they do indicate the need to examine the form of violation alleged and the nature of its effect on a plaintiff’s own business activities. See generally Pollock, Standing to Sue, Remoteness of Injury, and the Passing-on Defense, 32 A.B.A. Antitrust L.J. 5 (1966); Tim-berlake, Federal Treble Damage Antitrust Actions §§ 4.02, 4.03 (1965).
In this case the only facts which Billy Baxter, Inc. alleges concern the use of improper methods to persuade retail outlets to buy products other than those manufactured and sold by the bottlers paying royalties to appellant. There is no suggestion that any party approached the franchised bottlers and attempted to induce them to terminate their relationship with the appellant, or that any related steps were taken to interfere with the appellant’s own franchising business. Cf. Schwartz v. Broadcast Music, Inc., 180 F.Supp. 322 (S.D.N.Y.1959). The only “target area” of legitimate activity indicated by the franchisor is the marketing of bottled beverages.
The appellant’s claim to standing is not strengthened by the argument that the “target” was the line of Billy Baxter products rather than a specific “area” of economic activity in which the bottlers were engaged. Reference to the products as a target simply points to the self-evident fact that antitrust violations might do some damage to all the entities connected with their production and distribution. It is still necessary to examine a given plaintiff's role in these processes to determine whether it has the requisite relationship to the type of wrong alleged. Billy Baxter, Inc. was not only one step removed from the link in the production-distribution chain receiving the first impact of the alleged misconduct, but also it cannot claim to be a firm with comprehensive responsibilities for and identification with the beverages. Cf. Karseal Corp. v. Richfield Oil Corp., 221 F.2d 358 (9 Cir. 1955). It manufactured no products, and the bottlers did not act as its agents in doing so. The franchisor merely licensed the information needed for the manufacture of the beverages, supplied ingredients which still others had manufactured, and left further production activities to its franchisees. It would be meaningless to state that Billy Baxter, Inc. simply elected to carry on “its” business by authorizing others to bottle and sell the beverages, because the franchisor consciously structured the production-distribution process in a way which limited its own activities in order to gain the benefits of certain specific rights and liabilities. Thus the district court did not enforce a standing rule allocating economic loss to arbitrarily-determined vertical levels of an enterprise, but relied upon the fact that the appellant had expressly limited itself to a level outside the economic target area of the offense. See Snow Crest Beverages, Inc. v. Recipe Foods, Inc., 147 F.Supp. 907, 909 (D.Mass.1956).
Similarly, the appellant’s standing is not improved by the suggestion that the appellees, Coca-Cola Company and Canada Dry Corporation, were “its” competitors. The word “competitor” is no more instructive than the word “direct,” if either is taken out of the context of the facts of a specific case. In its complaint, Billy Baxter, Inc. contends that both of these firms are manufacturers as well as franchisors of independent bottlers; and it is not clear whether the alleged discriminatory price concessions and discounts are claimed to have been made to promote the sale of beverages actually bottled by one of the appellees, an activity in which it does not compete with the appellant, or to benefit sales in the five specified states by their franchised bottlers. In any case, even if the appel-lees violated the law to help themselves or their franchisees at the expense of the bottlers who sold Billy Baxter products, while knowing that this would also be an effective way of depriving a rival franchisor of royalties, the causal link between the type of violation alleged and an appropriate plaintiff would still be lacking in this suit. An interference with the marketing of beverages may interrupt profitable relationships and thereby harm a party which in effect “markets” franchises and ingredients, but the connection is not sufficiently compelling to support a treble damage suit.
The position of Billy Baxter, Inc., as a franchisor attempting to recover for this type of antitrust violation is not significantly different from that of a patent licensor suing for royalties lost because of injury to its patentee, SCM Corp. v. Radio Corp. of America, supra; Productive Inventions v. Trico Products Corp., supra; or of a supplier of ingredients suffering from a loss caused by an antitrust violation damaging the manufacturer and seller of a product, Volasco Prods. Co. v. Lloyd A. Fry Roofing C., 308 F.2d 383 (6 Cir. 1962), cert. denied 372 U.S. 907, 83 S.Ct. 721, 9 L.Ed.2d 717 (1963); Snow Crest Beverages, Inc. v. Recipe Foods, Inc., supra. Although Billy Baxter, Inc. licenses a trademark rather than a patent and also engages in certain advertising and promotional activities in support of this mark, we do not think this distinction suffices to give it standing to sue for damage caused by illegal interference with the marketing of its franchisees’ products. See, Nationwide Auto Appraiser Service, Inc. v. Association of Casualty & Surety Companies, 382 F.2d 925 (10 Cir. 1967).
Summary judgment was an appropriate remedy in this ease, because the factual questions of motive and intent were not material to the appellant’s standing. No genuine issue as to any material fact remained, because the nature of the appellant’s injuries and the appellees’ alleged activities were fully developed during two years of discovery and disclosure. Assuming the truth of appellant’s extensive material factual allegations, they were nevertheless insufficient to show standing to sue. See SCM v. Radio Corp. of America, supra. Denial of the motion for leave to serve an amended complaint two months after filing of the appellees’ summary judgment motion was also proper, since the verbal changes suggested would not have cured the absence of factual support for a showing of standing, indicated by prior judicial admissions.
The judgment is affirmed.
. Response to Canada Dry interrogatories, ¶ 9.
. Id., ¶ 10. In ¶ 9, Billy Baxter, Inc. noted that “on a few occasions” it purchased bottled beverages from one or more of its franchised bottlers for resale. These occasions were elaborated in ¶ 24, which stated:
“The Company did not sell products to customers who purchased from the company except in two instances. For a period of approximately three months during 1964, the company sold directly to Thoroughfare Supermarkets, Inc. (sales volume $10,925.00) and Giant Eagle Supermarkets, Inc. (sales volume $993.00), Pittsburgh, Pa. In addition, the company sold direct to Brussels Casino, Inc. (in 1964, sales volume $3,340.00) and Devil’s Head Cafe (in 1965, sales volume $1,236.00), at the New York World’s Fair.”
. Affidavit of William F. Adler, president of Billy Baxter, Inc., July 17, 1968, p. 2.
. See note 2, supra.
. The original complaint alleged a single count for violation of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1-7, 15; the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 12-27; and the Robinson-Pat-man Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 13, 15. The proposed amended complaint would have alleged four counts, the only one of which based on antitrust violation cited the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 12, 22, 26; the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1, 2; and the Robinson-Patman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 13.
. The complaint alleged that damage from the antitrust violations forced Billy Baxter, Inc. to try to sell its business, and that appellee Coca-Cola Co. interfered with this attempt. In its proposed amended complaint, the appellant characterized this and related claims as incidental to its basic claim of antitrust violations. The district court held that because the alleged attempt to sell the franchising business concerned a sale of stock, any claim based on interference would be vested in the Billy Baxter, Inc., stockholders rather than in the company. This holding has not been contested on appeal.
The complaint also alleged that appellee Canada Dry Corp. obstructed a proposed marketing program with a named dairy company; but since answers to the interrogatories disclosed that the program was actually that of Red Raven Corp., the franchised bottler which had owned the Billy Baxter trademark before 1962, the district court considered these allegations in conjunction with the antitrust standing arguments, infra.
. See note 2, supra.
. The district court also took note of the fact that Billy Baxter, Inc. had stated in its articles of incorporation that its corporate purpose was to sell or grant franchises authorizing others to bottle and sell trademarked beverages. The ap-pellees contended below that the Pennsylvania Constitution and New York’s Business Corporation Law § 1301(a) therefore prohibited Billy Baxter, Inc. from engaging in the business of manufacturing or selling the beverages themselves, and that the appellant never qualified to do business at all in New Jersey, Ohio or West Virginia. Billy Baxter, Inc. v. Coca-Cola Co., 47 F.R.D. 345, 349 (S.D.N.Y.1969).
. The appellant stated in its answers to interrogatories that details of specific concessions, discounts, gifts, or allowances to the named retail beverage outlets, or to other beverage purchasers, were largely known only to the guilty appellees; but it did not contend that other types of conduct were involved.
. The bottlers’ franchise agreements specified that they were not made agents or representatives of the franchisor “for any purpose whosoever.”
. The appellant did reserve the right to inspect the processes and conditions at the bottlers’ plants, and especially to have access to the bottlers’ auditing systems and financial records. The franchise agreement stated that the “volume control,” guaranteed by these inspection rights, was the franchisor’s “primary means of appraising licensee’s performance of this agreement,” since it determined the size of royalties owed. Apart from the language of this agreement, the record contains no mention of the nature of the relations of Billy Baxter, Inc. with the bottlers.
. For example, Billy Baxter, Inc. apparently did not qualify to do business itself in three of the states in which beverages using its trademark were marketed. See note 8, supra.
. The concessions and discounts alleged are attributed entirely to appellee Canada Dry Corp. The appellant contends that the Coca-Cola Co. is a participant in antitrust violations because of the alleged market division.
. The appellant stated that it kept no separate records of advertising related to particular products, and its expenditures for various types of advertising and promotion on behalf of its trademark also were not itemized. The franchisor noted that an unspecified part of this advertising expense represented the cost of material supplied to the bottlers for use in their own local advertising.