Apple emerges victorious in iPod antitrust lawsuit
Less than 24 hours after closing arguments were presented in Apple's iPod antitrust lawsuit, a jury ruled that Apple did not violate any antitrust laws when it took proactive measures to prevent songs downloaded from competing music services from being playable on the iPod.
The jury's verdict brings an end to a trial that has been nearly 10 years in the making.
The Verge adds:
Delivering a unanimous verdict today, the group said Apple's iTunes 7.0, released in the fall of 2006, was a "genuine product improvement," meaning that new features (though importantly increased security) were good for consumers. Plaintiffs in the case unsuccessfully argued that those features not only thwarted competition, but also made Apple's products less useful since customers could not as easily use purchased music or jukebox software from other companies with the iPod.
Throughout the trial, Apple emphasized that its efforts to keep the iPod locked down were to preserve a seamless user experience. Interestingly enough, Eddy Cue testified at trial that Apple at one point considered licensing its FairPlay DRM to competitors before ultimately determining that they "couldn't find a way to do that and have it work reliably."
Apple at trial also emphasized that implementing DRM was done at the behest of record labels who reserved the right to remove their music from iTunes if someone figured out a way to circumvent it.
"There are lots of hackers trying to hack into these things so that they can do things that would put us in noncompliance with the contracts we have with the music companies," Steve Jobs explained in a videotaped deposition from 2011. "We were very scared of that."
Further, and as we highlighted earlier today, the iTunes 7 update at the center of the litigation introduced a slew of usability improvements across the board, thus diminishing the claim that iTunes 7 was primarily designed to thwart competing music services.
With this trial now concluded, Apple can rest easy knowing that it won't have to fork over what could have been over $1 billion in damages. Though plaintiffs were suing for $350 million, a ruling that Apple willfully violated antitrust law could have potentially seen that figure tripled.
