A UK court has ruled that a developer’s lawsuit against Apple worth nearly a billion dollars will be allowed to continue, after the iPhone maker tried to get it dismissed.
A £785 million ($979 million) antitrust lawsuit has been filed on behalf of more than 1,500 British developers, alleging that Apple’s monopolistic control of the iPhone app market allowed the company to charge ‘abusive’ levels of commission on app sales…
It’s a common accusation
The basis of the case is of course known. It’s the reason Apple had to allow third-party app stores in the European Union, and one of the (many!) reasons why the Cupertino company is facing a DOJ antitrust case in the US.
In fact, edge cases aside, there was no way for a developer to sell an iPhone app to a consumer without doing so through the official App Store. Apple is therefore free to impose whatever conditions it wants and charge whatever commissions it wants, and developers have to just accept it and leave it at that.
This is now changing in EU countries – although not in a way that is likely to pass muster with regulators – but remains the case in the UK, US and the rest of the world.
The developer’s lawsuit is worth almost a billion dollars
The lawsuit was filed last summer.
The lawsuit in Great Britain at the Competition Appeal Tribunal is being led by Sean Ennis, a professor at the Center for Competition Policy at the University of East Anglia and a former economist at the OECD, on behalf of 1,566 app developers.
“Apple’s costs to app developers are excessive and only possible because of its monopoly over iPhone and iPad app distribution,” Ennis said in a statement. “The fees are inherently unfair and constitute a price abuse.”
Apple failed to reject it
Apple filed a motion urging the judge to dismiss the case, arguing that a British court should only be able to rule on commissions charged on UK sales, not global sales.
Reuters reports that the judge rejected this argument and ruled that the case would be heard.
[Apple] lawyer Daniel Piccinin argued at a hearing in January that developers could not have claims in the UK unless they were billed for purchases through the UK App Store. But the company’s request to throw out that part of the case was denied Friday.
Judge Andrew Lenon said in a written judgment that Ennis’ lawyers had a realistic prospect of establishing that “Apple’s overcharging of UK-based app developers in relation to trade carried out on non-UK storefronts did indeed constitute conduct carried out in the UK”. .
Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash
FTC: We use automatic affiliate links to earn money. More.