The U.S. Justice Department has filed an antitrust lawsuit to block a planned AT&T and Time Warner deal — marking the first time in several decades the government has tried to block a merger between two companies that don’t directly compete with each other.
The AT&T chief says the suit, “defies logic and is unprecedented,” but the Justice Department claims that AT&T’s $85.4 billion bid to buy Time Warner would mean higher fees and fewer choices for customers.
Qualcomm has suffered another blow in its battle with Apple after being fined a record $773 million by Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission for alleged antitrust violations over a period of at least seven years.
Specifically, the fine involves Qualcomm’s collection of NT$400 billion ($13.2 billion) in licensing fees from local companies. The Taiwanese regulator hammered Qualcomm’s monopolistic market status for not providing products to clients who won’t agree to its terms and conditions.
The highest court in the U.S. is debating whether or not it should hear an appeal from Apple on a class-action lawsuit that it lost in a lower court.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court asked the Trump administration’s Justice Department for its opinion on the case. Apple is accused of charging illegally high commissions on the sale of apps in its App Store, but the group suing Apple isn’t developers, it’s a bunch of consumers who purchased the apps.
China has confirmed that it is reviewing a possible antitrust complaint against Apple for allegedly abusing its market position in the country.
The complaint, from 28 Chinese developers, claims Apple charged excessive fees (the company’s usual 30 percent) and also removed apps from its App Store without providing a full explanation.
Apple may find itself at the center of a new antitrust lawsuit after the U.S. appeals court ruled that the App Store’s “walled garden” could be monopolizing the market for iOS apps.
What the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling takes issue with is the fact that iOS apps can only be downloaded from the App Store, and not from elsewhere — thereby adding up to a potential monopoly.
A group of authors and booksellers are standing by Apple in its decision to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling stating that Apple conspired to fix eBook prices when it launched its iBook store way back in January 2010.
The Authors Guild, Authors United, the American Booksellers Association, and Barnes & Noble have all banded together to file an “amicus brief” in the United States, arguing that the belief that Apple was taking place in “anti-competitive activities” was “misplaced.”
Having previously said that he expected to receive the European Commission’s verdict on Apple’s Irish tax arrangements by Christmas, Ireland’s Finance Minister Michael Noonan now claims that an announcement is likely to be delayed util next year.
The delay in the long-running investigation is the result of regulators asking for additional information from the Irish government, which will take several weeks to gather.
Apple’s just gotten to the end of its long and convoluted eBooks antitrust case, and now Germany’s Federal Cartel Office is reportedly investigating the company’s agreement with Amazon for purchasing audiobooks.
Apple and Amazon are said to have a long-term agreement in place for purchasing audio books from Amazon’s Audible company to distribute via the iTunes store. The terms of the deal haven’t been made clear.
Apple has finally ditched its controversial antitrust monitor Michael Bromwich after two years of what Apple acknowledges has been a “rocky relationship.”
Bromwich was first installed in Cupertino back in October 2013, after Apple was found to have illegally colluded with five book publishers to raise e-book prices in a way that was deemed to have hurt Apple’s competition.
In what is likely to be his final assessment to U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, controversial antitrust monitor Michael Bromwich admitted that Apple is doing well when it comes to antirust compliance — but decided to take a few parting shots at the company anyway.
“Apple has been its own worst enemy,” Bromwich said. “[Its] lack of cooperation has cast an unnecessary shadow over meaningful progress in developing a comprehensive and effective antitrust compliance program.”
Despite the fact that its compliance is “substantially stronger” than it was previously, that is!
In a story that would, ironically, make a pretty good eBook holiday thriller, Apple has dredged up its seemingly-ended eBook pricing conspiracy lawsuit — asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling stating that Apple conspired to fix eBook prices when it launched its original iPad and iBook store in January 2010.
Yep, it’s the return of the lawsuit that will never end!
The long-running Silicon Valley antitrust case that saw Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe accused of conspiring to suppress worker salaries has finally come to an end.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh gave final approval to a $415 million settlement in a ruling on Wednesday. This is an increase of around $90 million on the $324.5 million settlement rejected last year, but far below the $3 billion that plaintiff Michael Devine had asked for in a letter written to Koh in 2014.
Apple Music’s edge over streaming services like Spotify, Rdio and Pandora means that Apple gets to take a 30 percent cut of rivals’ App Store subscriptions — thereby forcing them to jack up their prices or lose money.
It’s the subject of a current FTC antitrust investigation, but according to Rutgers University law professor Michael Carrier, while it may be harsh, it’s probably not illegal.
It was inevitable that the success of Apple Music was going to have some people screaming about anti-competitive practices, and that’s exactly what happened. Yesterday, senator (and former SNL alumni) Al Franken threw his hat into the ring by writing a letter requesting that the Justice Department take the matter seriously.
This week, Apple lost its appeal on the antitrust case that the federal government and several state attorneys general filed on it concerning price fixing on ebooks. And now that that’s out of the way, it’s time for the company to pay up.
The green states in the map below were listed as plaintiffs on the class-action lawsuit, which means that if you live in one of them and have bought anything from iBooks, you may be entitled to a cut of the settlement.
Michael Bromwich, the court-appointed antitrust monitor who infamously handed Apple an “unprecedented” legal bill of $138,432 for his first two weeks’ work, is back — and his latest eyebrow-raising offence is charging Apple to “review relevant media articles.”
What does that mean, you might ask? In layman’s terms it refers to the fact that he’s billing Apple for reading the newspaper.
Apple’s not even announced its rebranded Beats Music streaming rival to Spotify yet, and already it’s under investigation from regulators.
According to a new report, multiple record labels and digital music companies have been contacted for questioning by the European Commission for what could be a redo of the Apple’s antitrust ebooks controversy, in which the company was forced to shell out $450 million in damages.
The mystery part: since such investigations are usually triggered only by a formal complaint to the commission, there’s plenty of finger-pointing going on regarding who’s responsible for throwing accusations Cupertino’s way. In true Clue fashion, was it an existing streaming music provider, in the dining room, with the endangered business model?
All will (presumably) be revealed.
The verdict is in, and after nearly a decade of legal wrangling, Apple has prevailed in the class-action lawsuit seeking over $1 billion in damages by iPod owners who claimed the company conspired to kill competing music services by adding restrictions to iTunes.
The eight-person jury found Apple not liable of adding DRM restrictions as an anti-competitive move toward rival players like RealNetworks from 2006 to 2009. The Verge reports that the jury unanimously delivered the verdict this morning and said that iTunes 7.0 is a “genuine product improvement” that increased security for consumers.
Apple was found guilty last year of colluding with publishers to raise ebook prices, but now that the antitrust case is being heard by the Second U.S. Court of Appeals, two out of the three appellate judges are starting to see things Apple’s way.
The appeals case kicked off this morning with Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart attempting to compare Apple to a driver taking a narcotics dealer to a drug pick up. The analogy was supposed to make the point that if Apple knew publishers were conspiring to fix ebook prices, it was just as guilty as them for facilitating the conspiracy. However, Fortune reports that Judge Denis Jacobs laughed off the analogy, pointing out that drug trafficking is one of the few “industries in which the law does not look with favor or new entrants.”
The comment drew a chorus of laughs in the courtroom, but Judge Jacob’s concerns went even further, as the the judge questioned whether the government should have even brought the case to court.
U.S. District Judge Denise Cote says that it is “most troubling” that Apple could potentially be made to pay just $70 million in its antitrust case related to e-book price fixing.
Cote was speaking during a teleconference on Thursday regarding the long-running case claiming that Apple conspired with five publishers to fix e-book prices.
In the original ruling made by Judge Cote in April 2012, Apple was expected to pay $674 million after the plaintiffs reached settlements with the individual publishers.
Steve Jobs may have been part of some of the biggest tech revolutions of the past forty years, but he was also part of an illegal attempt to suppress employee wages by way of a massive no-poaching agreement with other tech giants.
Another of the companies accused of similar actions by former employees was Pixar, the company Jobs purchased a majority interest in after being booted out of Apple in the mid-80s. In 2011, Pixar’s John Lasseter described Jobs as “forever…part of Pixar’s DNA.”
As it happens, that may not be entirely for the best.
Is Apple’s $3 billion acquisition of Beats Music a potential antitrust case? European Union antitrust regulators announced this morning that it will rule on whether or not to clear Apple’s Beats music bid by July 30.
It is hoped that the deal will help Apple gain the lead in the rapidly-growing and lucrative music streaming business. The European Commission has the power to either clear the Beats deal unconditionally, or else demand concessions if it sees competition issues.
Ever have that situation at school where a teacher who doesn’t seem to like you gives you a bizarrely good end-of-year grade?
That seems to be the case with Apple’s court-appointed monitor Michael Bromwich, who describes the company as being off to a “promising start” with its antitrust compliance program, after being last year found liable for conspiring to raise e-book prices.
Apple’s relationship with Bromwich appeared strained from the very start — with Apple objecting to Bromwich’s “unprecedented” first legal bill ($138,432 for his first two weeks’ work), along with his requests to access top Apple executives.
Both Bromwich and Apple ended up filing legal complaints about the other, although those complaints appear to have now simmered down.
In a new 77-page report filed in U.S. District Court in New York, Bromwich describes his relationship with Apple as “significantly improved” compared to where it was back in February, when Apple lawyers were trying to remove Bromwich from the case.
Apple has filed an appeal related to last year’s verdict stating that the company violated U.S. antitrust laws by conspiring with publishers to fix e-book prices.
The appeal — which was filed Tuesday with the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York — calls U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote’s ruling “a radical departure from modern antitrust law and policy,” and argues that it will “stifle innovation, chill competition, and harm consumers” if it is followed.
Apple has lost its latest bid to put court-appointed antitrust monitor Michael Bromwich on hold, with a federal appeals court rejecting Apple’s claim that the monitor’s work was causing irreparable harm.
In a brief order, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said that Bromwich (the former U.S. attorney and Justice Department inspector general given the job of ensuring antitrust compliance regarding e-book price fixing) may continue to examine Apple’s antitrust compliance policies, while Apple pursues a broader appeal seeking to remove him altogether.
