Plaintiffs Seek a Bite out of Apple in Class Action Lawsuit

A trial in a class action lawsuit brought against Apple commenced this week in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.  The class includes consumers who purchased certain iPod models between specified dates in 2006 and 2009.  The class plaintiffs claim that Apple violated antitrust laws by preventing (in the form of required software updates) these models of iPods from playing songs that were not purchased via Apple's iTunes Store.  The plaintiffs allege that Apple diminished the market for other music players and thus raised iPod prices higher than they would have been otherwise.

Apple contends that the software updates were necessary for product improvements and security of the devices.  A detailed summary of the litigation (which began in 2005) is available here from c|Net.

Emails from former Apple president Steve Jobs are included as evidence in the trial and a video deposition of Jobs will be played posthumously in court later this week.  More information about the ongoing trial is available here from Reuters News. 

Interested in more information about Antitrust Law or class action lawsuits?  Professor Thomas Horton has written many articles in the area of Antitrust Law which are available via his USD Law Selected Works author page here.  Consider also some of the following titles available in the Law Library:

Antitrust Law: An Analysis of Antitrust Principles and Their Application / Phillip E. Areeda

Federal Antitrust Policy: The Law of Competition and its Practice / Herbert Hovenkamp

Consumer Class Actions / Stuart T. Rossman, et al.

Class Actions and Other Multi-Party Litigation in a Nutshell / Robert H. Klonoff