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Apple's iPod antitrust lawsuit hinges on iTunes 7



Apple's iPod antitrust lawsuit wrapped up on Monday afternoon, capping off a week-long trial that has been close to 10 years in the making. Now, the case has been handed off to a jury that will deliberate whether or not Apple chose to keep its iTunes/iPod ecosystem closed off for anti-competitive reasons or if it was done for security reasons.

If there's been one recurring theme from Apple throughout the entirety of the trial, it's that keeping competing music services off of the iPod was more about security than anything else. In fact, Steve Jobs, during a videotaped deposition conducted in 2011, said that record companies reserved the right to immediately remove all of their music from iTunes if someone figured out a way to circumvent Apple's FairPlay DRM.

Ars Technica adds:

The jury will make an unusual split decision, deliberating first over the narrow issue of whether iTunes 7.0 was a true product improvement or an anti-competitive scheme to kick out Apple competitor RealNetworks.

If the jury sees the "software and firmware updates" in iTunes 7.0 as a real improvement, the case will be over-a win for Apple. If it doesn't see it that way, the jurors will still have to decide if Apple broke competition laws and, if so, how much the company should pay in damages. Plaintiffs are asking for $351 million, and any award will be tripled under antitrust law.

It's an interesting case for the jury to decide because the "damage" Apple was so fearful of is purely theoretical. Because Apple was so vigilant about locking down the iPod, Apple can't really point to any examples which illustrate how a wide open iPod would adversely affect the user experience.

As for iTunes 7, the software update at the heart of this legal battle, well, we covered all of its improvements all the way back in 2006.

Those seem like rather substantive upgrades to me.