Apple Facing Antitrust Case Brought By iTunes User

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

07 January 2005

Apple Computer has been sued by a disgruntled user of its iTunes service, it emerged on Monday.

In a suit filed in San Jose's District Court on Monday, California resident Thomas Slattery levelled antitrust charges at the firm over its stipulation that iTunes can only be used in conjunction with its own iPod devices.

"Apple has unlawfully bundled, tied, and/or leveraged its monopoly in the market for the sale of legal digital online music recordings to thwart competition in the separate market for portable hard drive digital music players and vice-versa," Mr Slattery alleged in court documents.

The filing went on to observe that:

"Apple has turned an open and interactive standard into an artifice that prevents customers from using the portable hard drive digital music player of their choice, even where players exist that would otherwise be able to play these music files absent Apple's actions."

Although there is precedent for such a claim, observers have suggested that Mr Slattery is unlikely to be successful in his claim against Apple. Speaking to Reuters, antitrust law professor at George Mason University, Ernest Gellhorn explained that:

"As a practical matter, the lower courts have been highly sceptical of such claims."

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