The multinational technology corporation Apple Inc. has been a participant in various legal proceedings and claims since it began operation and, like its competitors and peers, engages in litigation in its normal course of business for a variety of reasons. In particular, Apple is known for and promotes itself as actively and aggressively enforcing its intellectual property interests.Remembering Steve Jobs , General Patent Corporation, April 2012. Accessed April 13, 2012. Worthington, David, Apple's Lawsuit Against HTC: Bad for Consumers?, PCWorld, pcworld.com, March 4, 2010. Accessed 2012-04-13. Apple Legal – Piracy Prevention, Apple, Inc., apple.com. Accessed 2012-07-22.Moses, Lee, and Asher, Julian, Apple's future won't be brought to you by the letter 'i', The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), smh.com.au, March 12, 2010. Accessed 2012-04-13. From the 1980s to the present, Apple has been plaintiff or defendant in civil actions in the United States and other countries. Some of these actions have determined significant case law for the information technology industry and many have captured the attention of the public and media. Apple's litigation generally involves intellectual property disputes, but the company has also been a party in lawsuits that include antitrust claims, consumer actions, commercial unfair trade practice suits, defamation claims, and corporate espionage, among other matters.
Additionally, Apple has also been the defendant of a class action lawsuit for the use of young children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's cobalt-mining industry.
Background Apple is a member of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), whose principal activity is trying to stop copyright infringement of software produced by BSA members; Apple treats all its intellectual property as a business asset, engaging in litigation as one method among many to police its assets and to respond to claims by others against it.Apple Trademarks – Piracy Policy, Apple, Inc., apple.com. Accessed April 12, 2012. Apple's portfolio of intellectual property is broad enough, for trademarks alone, to encompass several pages of the company's web site and, in April 2012, it listed 176 general business trademarks, 79 service marks, 7 trademarks related to NeXT products and services, and 2 trademarks related to FileMaker.Apple trademark list, and NeXT trademark list, Apple, Inc., apple.com. Filemaker trademark list, FileMaker, Inc., filemaker.com. Accessed April 12, 2012. Apple claims copyright interests in multiple products and processes and owns and licenses patents of various types as well and, while it states it generally does not license its patent portfolio, it does work with third parties having an interest in product interoperability.Apple Legal – Patents, Apple, Inc., apple.com. Accessed April 12, 2012. Steve Jobs alone was a named inventor on over 300 design and utility patents.Helft, Miguel, and Carter, Shan, Apple Patents Show Steve Jobs's Attention to Design, The New York Times, nytimes.com, August 25, 2011. Accessed 2012-04-13. Between January 2008 and May 2010, Apple Inc. filed more than 350 cases with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office (USPTO) alone, most in opposition to or taking exception to others' use of the terms "apple", "pod", and "safari"; those cases include sellers of apples (the fruit), as well as many others' less unassuming use of the term "apple".U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board search for 'Apple Inc.'. Accessed July 26, 2012. (This search is not instant and takes a minute to return results.)
Antitrust
Apple iPod, iTunes antitrust litigation The case In re Apple iPod iTunes Antitrust Litigation was filed as a class action in 2005MacLean, Pamela, and Gullo, Karen, Apple's Jobs Must Answer Questions in ITunes Antitrust Suit, Bloomberg News, bloomberg.com, March 22, 2011. Accessed 2012-04-13. Apple customer Thomas Slattery filed the suit seeking class-action status on behalf of consumers, claiming Apple illegally limited consumer choice by limiting iPod content selection to the company's own iTunes music store. claiming Apple violated the U.S. antitrust statutes in operating a music-downloading monopoly that it created by changing its software design to the proprietary FairPlay encoding in 2004, resulting in other vendors' music files being incompatible with and thus inoperable on the iPod.In re Apple iPod iTunes Antitrust Litigation, case C-05-00037-JW, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107127, N.D. Cal., December 22, 2008. Accessed 2012-07-26. The suit initially alleged that five days after RealNetworks released in 2004 its Harmony technology making its music playable on iPods, Apple changed its software such that the RealNetworks music would no longer play on iPods.Sharpe, N.F., and Arewa, O.B., Is Apple Playing Fair? Navigating the iPod FairPlay DRM Controversy, NW Jour. of Tech. & Intell. Prop., 5:2, 2007, p. 332. Accessed July 22, 2012. The claims of Apple's changes to its encoding and its refusal to license FairPlay technology to other companies were dismissed by the court 2009, but the allegation of Apple's monopoly on the iPod's music download capabilities between 2004 and 2009 remained as of July 2012.Cheng, Jacqui, iPod owners being notified of class-action antitrust suit against Apple, The lawsuit has been winding its way through the legal system since 2004, Ars Technica, arstechnica.com, May 9, 2012. Accessed July 23, 2012. The case was granted class action status in 2012 and a website was set up for class members: ipodlawsuit.com (this link works only with referrers turned on in the browser). In March 2011, Bloomberg reported that, after a related 3-year inquiry by the Competition Commission, Apple agreed in 2008 to lower its prices on iTunes tracks sold in the United Kingdom and that Steve Jobs had been directed by the court in March 2011 to make himself available to be deposed on Apple's FairPlay changes as they relate to the plaintiffs' monopolization claim.
Apple and AT&T Mobility antitrust class action In October 2007 (four months after the iPhone was introduced), Paul Holman and Lucy Rivello filed a class action lawsuit (numbered C07-05152) in the Northern District of California. The lawsuit referenced Apple's SIM lock on the iPhone and Apple's (at the time) complete ban on third-party apps, and alleged that the 1.1.1 software update was "expressly designed" to disable unapproved SIM cards and apps. The lawsuit said that this was an unfair, unlawful, and fraudulent business practice (see False advertising) under California's Unfair Competition Law; that the combination of AT&T Mobility and Apple was to reduce competition and cause a monopoly in violation of California's antitrust law and the Sherman Antitrust Act; and that this disabling was a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.Complaint, Paul Holman et al. v. Apple Inc. et al. No. 07-05152, U.S. Dist.Ct., N.D. Cal. 2007. Accessed August 25, 2013.
Shortly after this initial filing, other lawsuits were filed, and these were consolidated with the original Holman suit, bringing in additional plaintiffs and complaints: Timothy Smith, et al., v. Apple, Inc. et al., No. C 07-05662 RMW, adding complaints related to ringtones,Order Relating Cases; Consolidating Cases; And Setting Case Management Conference, In Re Apple & AT&TM Anti-Trust Litigation No. C 07-05152 & No. C 07-05662, U.S. Dist.Ct., N.D. Cal. 2008. Accessed August 25, 2013. and Kliegerman v. Apple, Inc., No. C 08-948, bringing in allegations under the federal Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act.Stipulation And Order Granting Plaintiff's Administrative Motion To Relate Cases Under L.R. 3-12, In Re Apple & AT&TM Anti-Trust Litigation No. C 07-05152, U.S. Dist.Ct., N.D. Cal. 2008. Accessed August 25, 2013. The combined case title was changed to In Re Apple & AT&TM Anti-Trust Litigation. The court appointed lead counsel from the various plaintiffs' lawyers, and several versions of a combined complaint were filed.
In October 2008, the court denied the defendants' motions to dismiss the case on the federal claims and granted their motions to dismiss the state unfair trade practice claims except in California, New York, and Washington, but gave the plaintiffs leave to amend those claims.In re Apple & AT&TM Antitrust Litig., No. C 07-05152 JW, 2010 WL 3521965, N.D. Cal., 2010-07-08, pp. 5–8. In December 2011, the district court granted Apple and AT&T's motions to compel arbitration, following the Supreme Court decision in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, and decertified the class; in April 2012 the Ninth Circuit denied plaintiffs permission to appeal.Order Granting Apple's Motion To Dismiss Amended Consolidated Complaint, In Re Apple iPhone Antitrust Litigation No. C 11-cv-06714-YGR, U.S. Dist.Ct., N.D. Cal. 2013. Accessed August 25, 2013.
In December 2011, immediately after class decertification of the previous case, a new group of plaintiffs led by Robert Pepper won the race to the courthouse by filing a complaint in the Northern District, which was combined with some slightly later filers and titled In re Apple iPhone Antitrust Litigation, case 11-cv-06714-YGR. The new case is essentially the same but is filed only against Apple, not AT&T Mobility. In late 2013, the various parts of the case were dismissed by the district court. The parts relating to SIM locking were rejected because AT&T was not a party and the plaintiffs were not willing to add AT&T. The remaining claim, in its final version, was that Apple monopolised the market for iPhone applications and that the plaintiffs were damaged by paying Apple's 30% commission for paid applications in the App Store, which the court rejected saying that the commission was "a cost passed-on to consumers by independent software developers", not paid by the consumers directly, and so the plaintiffs did not have standing under the Illinois Brick doctrine.Order Granting Apple's Motion To Dismiss Second Amended Complaint With Prejudice, In Re Apple iPhone Anti-Trust Litigation No. C 11-cv-06714-YGR, U.S. Dist.Ct., N.D. Cal. 2013. Accessed December 18, 2013.
The plaintiffs appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which reversed the District Court's dismissal. The Ninth Circuit asked the question whether, in light of Illinois Brick, Apple should be treated as a manufacturer or producer, in which case the class did not have standing to sue, or if they should be considered a distributor, in which case the class could sue for damages.
Apple appealed the case to the Supreme Court of the United States, which agreed to hear the case, Apple Inc. v. Pepper in its 2018 term. The Supreme Court upheld the Ninth Circuit's ruling in May 2019, in that the class did have standing to sue Apple for antitrust concerns.
European antitrust investigation