Have your say Apple Wins Decade-Old iTunes Suit

 

Apple Wins Decade-Old iTunes Suit

 

On Tuesday, after a mere three hours of deliberation, a jury ruled in favor of Apple in a decade-old class-action lawsuit.

The eight-person jury in the United States District Court in Oakland, California found that Apple's changes to iTunes, back in iTunes 7.0, were to improve the product, not a scheme to suppress competition. The plaintiffs sought at least $350 million in damages, which could have grown to $1 billion if Apple was found to have violated antitrust law. The lawsuit involved iPods sold between September 2006 and March 2009 that were limited to music purchased from iTunes or downloaded from CDs. Apple was accused of using a copyright management system to keep users within its brand from iTunes to iPods. The lawsuit has been in various courts in various forms throughout the years before it finally went to trial this month.

In a statement, Apple said, "We created iPod and iTunes to give our customers the world's best way to listen to music. Every time we've updated those products -- and every Apple product over the years -- we've done it to make the user experience even better." Apple's lawyer, William Isaacson, said that the substance of the plaintiffs' case was negligible. "There's not one piece of evidence of a single individual who lost a single song, not even a complaint about it," said Isaacson. "This is all made up at this point." Patrick Coughlin, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said that they were happy to see this case get to jury and said that it was a "very tough case." Coughlin added that the plaintiffs plan to appeal the decision.