Ondrej Holzman Yesterday, eight jurors reached a verdict in the case of a protection system that Apple implemented in iTunes and iPods, and was supposed to harm users with it, and to pay more than 8 million customers a total of up to one billion dollars in damages. But the jury unanimously decided that Apple had not committed any harm to users or competitors.
A panel of jurors said Tuesday that the fall 7.0 iTunes 2006 update around which the case revolved was a "genuine product improvement" that brought new features good for customers. At the same time, it introduced an important security measure that, according to the lawsuit, not only blocked competition, but also harmed users who could not easily transfer purchased music between devices, but the jurors did not find this a problem.
Their decision means that Apple did not violate antitrust laws in any way. Had he violated them, the original $350 million in damages sought by the lawsuit could have been tripled because of those laws. However, the plaintiffs of more than eight million customers who purchased iPods between September 2006 and March 2009 will not receive any compensation, at least according to the current court ruling.
"We thank the jury for their service and applaud their verdict," Apple said in a press statement after the judges presented their decision. “We created iPod and iTunes to give customers the best way to listen to music. Every time we've updated these products – and any other Apple product – we've done so to make the user experience even better.”
There was no such satisfaction on the other side, where the plaintiffs' lead lawyer, Patrick Coughlin, revealed that he was already preparing an appeal. He doesn't like that the two security measures -- iTunes database checking and iPod track checking -- were lumped together with other new features in iTunes 7.0, such as video and game support. "At least we got a chance to take it to a jury," he told reporters. Apple representatives and the jurors declined to comment on the case.
Apple succeeded with the jury in that it built its ecosystem in a closed manner similar to, for example, Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo with their game consoles, so that the individual products (in this case, iTunes and iPods) work perfectly with each other, and it was impossible to expect that a product from another manufacturer it will work in this system without problems. At the same time, Apple's lawyers stated that the development of the DRM protection system, which ultimately prevented the access of competing products to the Apple ecosystem, was absolutely necessary due to the agreements concluded with record companies.
After two weeks, the case in Oakland, which originally started back in 2005, was closed. Although the jury has now decided in favor of Apple, but the lawsuit is already preparing an appeal, according to its words, so we can't call this case closed yet.
You can find the complete coverage of the case <a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1932/8043/files/200721_ODSTOUPENI_BEZ_UDANI_DUVODU__EN.pdf?v=1595428404" data-gt-href-en="https://en.notsofunnyany.com/">here</a>.
