“After an almost decade-long fight in federal court, consumer lawyers will ask a jury in Oakland, California, today to find Apple violated antitrust laws by locking customers into iTunes and owes more than $1 billion in damages,” Karen Gullo reports for Bloomberg. “Steve Jobs’s role in the company’s strategy will be probed as they show his e-mails and testimony videotaped six months before his death in 2011.”
“The trial promises a trip back in time, when the iPod was still new and dominated in digital music. Gwen Stefani’s ‘Hollaback Girl’ and Green Day’s ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ were hits and Apple sold more 22 million iPods in 2005,” Gullo reports. “A year earlier, Apple had accused RealNetworks Inc. of using ‘the tactics and ethics of a hacker’ with a program allowing consumers to buy music, circumvent Apple’s digital rights software and play it on iPods.”
“Attorneys representing as many as 14 million consumers who purchased iPods from 2006 to 2009 claim Apple modified iTunes software so music downloaded with RealNetworks software couldn’t be played. Locking iPod owners into iTunes stifled competition for downloading services and enabled Apple to charge more for iPods, they claim,” Gullo reports. “Apple called this theory “implausible,” saying in a court filing that RealNetworks, which isn’t a party in the case, was a minor player and there’s no evidence consumers were locked into buying an iPod. The software modifications provided security and anti-hacking fixes, and while they may have disabled programs like Harmony software made by RealNetworks, they were justified and lawful because they enhanced and improved iPods, Apple said in court filings.”
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