US: Consumers dealt loss in Apple app legal riff

A US district judge ruled Monday to dismiss antitrust charges brought against Apple Inc. over its smartphone application monopoly, dealing a blow to consumers who claimed the company passed on millions of dollars thanks to its pricing policies.

Consumers filed the complaint against Apple claiming the company’s practice of keeping 30 percent of funds from app purchases created by independent developers transferred millions in extra costs for app buyers.

But US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers disagreed and dismissed the charges, ruling that the excess costs were placed onto consumers by the independent developers and not Apple. An attorney for the app buyers said he plans to appeal the decision to a federal appeals court in San Francisco.

That appeals court previously ruled that consumers can bring antitrust lawsuits, which allowed app buyers to bring their own case against Apple.

According to the buyers’ lawyer, Alexander Schmidt, “a consumer that buys a monopoly-priced product direction from a monopolist is a direct purchaser” and therefore the fees charged to consumers are transferred to them by Apple.

Full Content: Bloomberg

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