There is also no evidence that IBM offered a preferential price for the purchase of storage systems from it. The defense did not refer in its summaries to a price quote given by IBM Levi in connection with this CBD. This is joined by the testimony of Levy according to which there was no preference on his part and that Levy and Harel approached him to expedite the submission of proposals that were not superficial (p. 6494, paras. 10-19). However, even if we assume that the correspondence between Lavid and Shahar can support, indirectly, the claim that IBM preferred Wii in the case here, such prioritization does not negate the feasibility of pricing, and in any event, it does not justify or legitimize the coordination of price quotes (and see the discussion on this matter in paragraph 1071 below).
The defendants pointed out that the proposals submitted by Gilad and Shachar to Balam Storage Systems included a certain change in configuration in relation to the demand made by Balam; that Lavid only updated Wii in the configuration he received from another IBM entity and even instructed Shachar on how to request by hand (N/134) and that Gilad was not even familiar with the needs of the project and the change in configuration and could not submit – according to the claim – a proposal. In doing so, they sought to find support both for the claim that the CBM was fictitious and for the involvement of IBM. There is no substance to these claims. This is a change in one component, the volume of the disc, which was not significant (Menashe, p. 1524, paras. 12-13; 1517, paras. 22-23; see also Oshri testimony, p. 5222, paras. 4-7 that this is simply an "evolution" and a transition to a slightly larger disk). This was in the framework of the BALAM that did not have any special complexity, in which all that was required was to make a proposal for five storage systems, and that there was no difficulty for any doubt to submit a proposal in response to it (Shahar, 2920, paras. 23-27, any reasonable integrator could request a proposal from the manufacturer and submit a proposal to the BALAM). The fact that Lavid drew Shachar's attention to a technical matter relating to the entry of the application into IBM's systems is also of no real significance (Lavid, p. 6459, paras. 14-28, where he explained that this was a technical matter and not "critical" information as claimed).