• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Epic ruling invites future efforts to paint Apple as monopolist -experts

September 10, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

September 10, 2021

By Jan Wolfe and Mike Scarcella

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. judge stopped short of labeling Apple Inc an “illegal monopolist” on Friday, but the closely-watched ruling provides a roadmap for similar claims against the iPhone maker in the future, legal experts said.

Ruling on an antitrust case brought by Epic Games, creator of the online game “Fortnite,” U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said Epic did not present sufficient evidence of Apple having unlawful monopoly power in the relevant market, which she defined as “digital mobile gaming transactions.”

But the California judge made clear that the decision was limited to the facts before her.

“While the Court finds that Apple enjoys considerable market share of over 55% and extraordinarily high profit margins, these factors alone do not show antitrust conduct,” Gonzalez Rogers said. “The Court does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal monopolist.”

The judge did find that Apple’s rules on its lucrative App Store business violated California state competition laws.

The question of whether Apple abused monopoly power “remains very much unsettled,” said Joshua Paul Davis, a professor of antitrust law at the University of San Francisco School of Law.

“Given how controversial these issues are right now, I would expect this not to be the final say,” he said.

In her ruling, Gonzalez Rogers noted that Epic Games had “overreached” in a trial earlier this year by trying to define the relevant market as all app distribution and in-app payments on iPhones.

“As a consequence, the trial record was not as fulsome with respect to antitrust conduct in the relevant market as it could have been,” Gonzalez Rogers said.

Apple’s legal team said it was still reviewing whether to appeal the decision.

“We’re extremely pleased with this decision,” Apple’s General Counsel Katherine L. Adams told reporters. “It underscores the merit of our business, both as an economic and competitive engine.”

Valarie Williams, a partner at law firm Alston & Bird, called Gonzalez Rogers’ decision a “road map” to future plaintiffs pursuing monopoly claims against Apple.

Future plaintiffs could bring a case that adopts Gonzalez Rogers’s market definition and introduces additional evidence, Williams said.

Sam Weinstein, a professor of antitrust law at Cardozo School of Law, agreed the judge’s ruling could encourage other market participants to learn from Epic’s case and try to launch a stronger blow against Apple.

Language in the ruling could even signal that the judge thinks “it’s only a matter of time” before Apple becomes a monopoly, Weinstein said.

“This is only one particular piece of litigation framed in one particular way,” said Davis. “The court was pretty explicit that different litigants could come forward with different evidence…and that could potentially change the result.”

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Mike Scarcella; Additional reporting by Stephen Nellis and Diane Bartz; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Sonya Hepinstall)

Source Link Epic ruling invites future efforts to paint Apple as monopolist -experts

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. Exclusive-Apple hit with antitrust case in India over in-app payments issues
  2. Get 50B of data for just £12 a month with this unbeatable Smarty SIM only deal
  3. FTC bans spyware maker SpyFone, and orders it to notify hacked victims
  4. The only one way to tackle ransomware: Zero Trust

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • The Deadliest Animal In The US Isn’t What You’d Expect
  • Humpback Whale Flippers Let Them Move “Like Underwater Fighter Pilots” To Make Unique Bubble Nets
  • The Only Place On Earth Where You (Yes, You) Can Search For Diamonds – And Keep What You Find
  • Bizarre Gravitational Collisions Reveal Hints Of First Black Hole Throuple
  • Newly Discovered Dinosaur’s “Sail-Like” Structure Along Its Back May Have Attracted Mates
  • What Are Lagrange Points, And Why Are They Important?
  • Fish Left The Ocean 10 Million Years Earlier Than Thought, JWST Spots Tiny New Moon Just Outside Uranus’s Rings, And Much More This Week
  • IFLScience We Have Questions: Do Humans Have Pheromones?
  • The Least Visited Place On Earth Is Disappearing Quickly – And May Be Reborn Online
  • Climate Models Have Predicted Sea Level Rise Almost Perfectly For 30 Years
  • Atlantic Great White Sharks Are Creeping Up The East Coast Of The US And Canada
  • New World Screwworm: What Is It, And Why Is It Hitting The Headlines?
  • Australia Has Its Very Own “Area 51”
  • Think You Know What A Bald Eagle Sounds Like? Think Again
  • GLP-1s: Your No-Nonsense Guide To The Latest Science Behind The “Skinny Jabs”
  • Deep In Virginia, When The Light Hits Just Right, A “Rainbow Swamp” Appears
  • New Approach To Einstein’s Equations Might Tell Us What Happened Before The Big Bang
  • Air Pollution From Oil And Gas Causes 91,000 Premature Deaths In The US Every Year
  • The Secret To Saving Bees Might Be… Yeast?
  • Miles Below Earth’s Surface, Scientists Found A Giant Ecosystem Teeming With Life
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version