Almost everyone knows that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is in the middle of yet another lawsuit. The company has been alleged for taking measures that were anti-competitive for its opponent companies, which deal with music services. According to the latest news, chances are that the company will get away with a clean slate because the other side is having difficulties in finding the plaintiffs.
What is interesting to note here is that the lawyers of Apple Inc. have found some contradictory evidence to the claims that were made by the plaintiffs. The documents revealed that the 2 major plaintiffs that are involved in the suit never even bought the models of iPods that are the reason for the lawsuit. To put it in another way, the case will probably be dismissed because the plaintiffs never bore any damages.
Coming to the history of lawsuit, the suit was filed against Apple Inc. on the charges that the company removed thousands of songs distributed by its competitors from its own iPods during the time period of 2007 to 2009. When asked about this step of the company, the management relied on the old ‘security reasons’ escape goat.
The lawyer of the plaintiffs told the media that this class-action was brought against the company because it used its influence to discourage the customers from downloading the music files from Apple’s competitors. If the user downloaded music from some other source and tried to sync it with his/her iPod, the device would show a message of error and would ask the user to check factory settings.
The plaintiffs asked for a total of $350 million in damages and the trial for the case was held this week. The trial does not cover all the models of iPods; only the models manufactured and purchased between the time period of September 2006 and March 2009 qualify for damages. And since the plaintiffs did not have these models, the case against Apple Inc. has become quite weak.
This is not the first time that the company has been accused of such anti-competitive measures. In the past, Apple Inc. had to change its app tags as well due to a European Council ruling. The company was giving away ‘free’ apps when in fact they were not free. Users could download the apps for free but then, they would have to make in-app purchases in order to fully enjoy them. The company generated hundreds and thousands of dollars in revenues due to this tactic. After it was directed by the European Council, Apple changed the tag from ‘free’ to ‘get’ so as not to confuse the customers.
Coming to the stock prices of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), the company saw a decrease of 4 percent in its stock value as soon as the trial started. Currently, the stocks are being traded within the range of $115.29 and $117.20. As far as the market capitalization of Apple is concerned, the figures are reported to be around $678.99 billion.