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Supreme Court to decide whether Apple can be sued over its app prices

A 1977 Supreme Court decision said customers can win anti-trust damages only from direct sellers, not distributors like Apple.

Supreme Court to decide whether Apple can be sued over its app prices

[Photo: Joe Ravi/Wikimedia Commons]

BY Mark Sullivan0 minute read

In 2011 a group of people in California sued Apple for holding a monopoly on selling apps for iDevices, and for selling the apps at an elevated price.

A federal appeals court revived the case in 2017 after it was originally thrown out by a federal court in Oakland, California. The Trump administration reportedly encouraged the Supreme Court to take the case.

The case swings on whether or not consumers can sue Apple over app prices, as it’s really the app developers who set the prices for the apps. It’s true that the vast majority of iDevice users go to Apple’s app store to buy apps, and that Apple takes a sizable 30% cut of each app sold there, which is surely passed on to app buyers.

If the Supreme Court upholds the decision of the appeals court and decides Apple can be sued, it could open the door for similar class action suits against companies like Amazon and eBay, as both provide dominant marketplaces where third parties sell products.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Sullivan is a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. Before coming to Fast Company in January 2016, Sullivan wrote for VentureBeat, Light Reading, CNET, Wired, and PCWorld More


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