A UK court has ruled that a near billion dollar developer lawsuit against Apple will be allowed to proceed, after the iPhone maker attempted to get it dismissed.
The £785M ($979M) antitrust lawsuit was filed on behalf of more than 1,500 British developers, and alleges that Apple’s monopolistic control of the market for iPhone apps allowed the company to charge ‘abusive’ levels of commission on app sales …
It’s the usual accusation
The basis of the case is of course a familiar one. It’s the reason Apple has been required to allow third-party app stores in the European Union, and one of the (many!) reasons the Cupertino company is facing a DOJ antitrust case in the US.
Namely, edge cases aside, there has been 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 terms it likes, and charge whatever commissions it pleases, and developers have to simply take it it leave it.
That is now changing in EU countries – though not in a way that is likely to pass muster by regulators – but remains the case in the UK, US, and the rest of the world.
The near billion dollar developer lawsuit
The lawsuit was filed last summer.
The UK lawsuit at the Competition Appeal Tribunal is being brought by Sean Ennis, a professor at the Centre 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 charges to app developers are excessive, and only possible due to its monopoly on the distribution of apps onto iPhones and iPads,” Ennis said in a statement. “The charges are unfair in their own right, and constitute abusive pricing.”
Apple failed to get it dismissed
Apple filed a motion calling on the judge to dismiss the case, arguing that a UK court should only be able to rule on commissions charged from UK sales, not from global ones.
Reuters reports that the judge rejected this argument, and ruled that the case will be heard.
[Apple] lawyer Daniel Piccinin argued at a hearing in January that developers cannot have a claim in the UK unless they were charged on purchases made through the UK App Store. But the company’s bid to throw out that part of the case was rejected on Friday.
Judge Andrew Lenon said in a written ruling that Ennis’ lawyers had a realistic prospect of establishing that “Apple’s overcharging of commission to app developers based in the UK in relation to commerce transacted on non-UK storefronts did amount to conduct implemented in the UK”.
Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash
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