“An unhappy iTunes online music store customer is suing Apple Computer Inc., alleging the company broke antitrust laws by only allowing iTunes to work with its own music player, the iPod, freezing out competitors, court filings showed. Apple, which opened its online music store in April 2003 after introducing the iPod in October 2001, uses technology to ensure each digital song bought from its store only plays on the iPod,” Duncan Martell reports for Reuters.

“The suit was filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court in San Jose. One antitrust expert called it a long shot, but Californian Thomas Slattery is hoping for unspecified damages for being ‘forced’ to buy an iPod, one of the most successful electronics products in years,” Martell reports. “‘Apple has unlawfully bundled, tied, and/or leveraged its monopoly in the market for the sale of legal online digital music recordings to thwart competition in the separate market for portable hard drive digital music players, and vice-versa,’ the suit charged. Slattery called himself an iTunes customer who ‘was also forced to purchase an Apple iPod’ if he wanted to take his music with him to listen to.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: A joke. Too many other online music stores and portable digital music players are available – most of them claiming to be “iPod Killers” and/or “iTunes Killers.” It’s not Apple’s fault that none of them can make a compelling, original player or a decent music store. This case ought to be thrown out of court posthaste.