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On Monday, Apple finally had its highly anticipated hearing in the US Supreme Court. Since 2011, the tech giant is fighting an antitrust dispute that claims that its policies on the App Store constitute an unfair monopoly. Those present at today's hearing said the case did not have a very good outcome for Apple.
The case of Pepper v Apple Inc He has committed himself to the country's highest court (which we have already described), but the most important thing to know is that the lower courts have opposed the question of whether Robert Pepper and three other Apple who joined him in a class. action even follows the right to sue the iPhone manufacturer. Pepper says that by forcing iOS users to get apps on Apple's App Store and by charging developers a 30% reduction in their revenue, the company creates a system in which nobody can not compete and where the consumer absorbs higher prices. Apple quotes precedents as Illinois Brick and Shoe Hanover to argue that it is simply an intermediary between the application developers and the users and that, therefore, it can not be legally charged with the charges "passed on". The company says that if consumers have a problem with the price of applications, they should talk to their developers.
No matter how it goes, the case will not remove Apple's wall-hung Apple iOS – but it could force the company to at least install a door.
After seven years of deadlock in the system, the Supreme Court will now decide whether Pepper has the right to sue Apple … or at least it will render a decision in the coming months. For now, all we have is a transcript of the audience and the impressions of those who were able to attend the hearing in person. Let's first look at these impressions:
Los Angeles Times:
The Trump administration's lawyers joined Apple in asking the High Court to dismiss the case, but they encountered skeptical questions from most judges …
The four liberal judges hinted that they were inclined to let the lawsuit go ahead.
Associated press:
Chief Justice John Roberts was alone among the nine judges who seemed willing to accept Apple.
United States today:
The four Liberal judges were clearly skeptical of Apple's monopoly and were joined in turn by three Conservatives: Assistant Judges Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
The reports published at the hearing almost universally agree that judges did not seem to buy Apple's arguments and almost all used the term "skeptics." However, a skeptical questioning could simply result from a thorough hearing.
After reviewing the transcript, it seems clear that Judge Sonia Sotomayor relied heavily on Apple. She explained to Apple's lawyer, Daniel Wall, that the precedent created by Illinois Brick does not seem to apply as he thinks.
This case revealed that customers could not pursue a brick monopoly because they were not direct buyers of the bricks. Customers bought bricks from bricklayers who acted as middlemen. As the direct purchaser of bricks, masons were the only ones to have the right to sue the monopoly of the brick. Establishing the direct buyer as the one who is legally entitled to sue in an antitrust case was intended to prevent multiple groups from suing a company for the same offense. "It's not quite like that," Sotomayor told Wall. "It's radically different. This is a closed loop.
According to Apple, Apple charges a commission to provide developers with the necessary tools to create an app that is then directly sold by developers to users via the App Store. Sotomayor and others rejected the idea that iOS users buy directly from the developer. "Apple took 30% of the customer, not the developer," said Sotomayor. Wall responded by claiming that even the Ninth Circuit's appeal court, which had already ruled against the entire Apple case, had agreed that "the flow of payments mattered little. to the question of Illinois Brick. Judge Stephen Breyer said: I do not think that is true, even if they concluded it.
Breyer presented his point of view on the arrangement with an analogy:
If Joe Smith buys from Bill, who bought a monopoly, then we have something indirect. But, if Joe Smith bought a monopoly, it's direct. It's a simple theory.
Now, I can find no reason, no case law, or what I have ever learned about antitrust, nothing that may conflict with that. And what I want is to tell me what?
The exchange went on like this, Wall complicated things and Breyer insisted on bringing it back to mere illustrations of who is or is not the "direct buyer".
If all this sounds confusing, do not worry, it's confusing. In other words, the judges who gave Wall the most trouble did not seem to buy the argument that Apple does not sell its applications directly to users. At one point, Sotomayor bluntly stated, "I'm sorry, the – the first sale is made by Apple to the customer."
But what has perhaps been the most intriguing part of the hearing, is that this argument would have allowed us to have a glimpse of the antitrust case itself if the Supreme Court allowed him to go from the front. When Wall tried to assert that the case was arguing that the 30% commission constituted the official "injury" against consumers, Sotomayor insisted that the alleged injury was in fact the removal of the "money". a cheaper price. "They have to go out and prove in the next step how, without this monopoly, they would have paid less," she said. "It could be as little as a penny or nothing or it could be something more."
Chief Justice John Roberts seemed to be the only member of the court to be convinced that Apple's case was strong. He said: "To the extent that one could say that Apple is a double-sided market, they are subject to suing both sides of the market for a single increase in the antitrust price that they are supposed to have imposed . In other words, Roberts said that Apple was vulnerable to the very outcome that Illinois Brick was intended to prevent two separate parties from bringing an action for the same offense. Judge Elena Kagan stated that this argument was wrong because the damage suffered in each situation was totally different. Kagan insisted that users would be able to sue because they are paying too much and that developers would be able to sue for lost profits.
Today's hearing will not solve anything about technology-walled gardens, other than the right of consumers to sue, but this has given us the idea that developers and users could complain about a different recourse. However, you think that this case should disappear, the argument that Apple can be sued for its monopoly on iOS seems relatively solid.
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