In a lawsuit that has spanned a whopping 10 years, consumer lawyers began today asking a jury in Oakland, Calif., to find that Apple violated antitrust laws by restricting how iTunes users could use the music they purchased and how iPod owners couldn't play music that was purchased via other digital media stores.
The lawsuit could result in Apple having to pay more than $1 billion in damages due to damages tripling under antitrust legislation. The trial is expected to last nine days.
The trial will include a videotaped statement by late Apple founder Steve Jobs and will probe his role in the company's strategy.
Attorneys against Apple are representing as many as 14 million iPod owners who purchased devices from 2006 to 2009. They claim Apple locked owners into iTunes, not only stifling competition for other downloading services but also allowing Apple to charge more for iPods. According to attorneys, the result was overcharges of 7.5 percent on iPods sold to customers and 2.3 percent on iPods sold to retailers, with damages totaling around $352 million.
The iPod itself has seen a massive sales fall since the release of the iPhone in 2007.
Witnesses slated to testify are Eddy Cue, the company's head of software and Internet services, including the iTunes store. Jeff Robin, who was a co-creator of the iPod, and Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple, may also be called to testify.
"It would be egregious and unlawful for a major retailer such as Tower Records, for example, to require that all music CDs purchased by consumers at Tower Records be played only with CD players purchased at Tower Records," say the opening paragraphs of the complaint, which was first written in 2005. "Yet, this is precisely what Apple has done... Apple has rigged the hardware and software in its iPod such that the device will not directly play any music files originating from online music stores other than Apple's iTunes music store."
Apple eventually removed DRM, or digital rights management, from iTunes in 2009, meaning that users were able to buy songs on iTunes and then play them on other media players.
"This insertion of the stranger in the middle could not get everything right. It posed a danger to the consumer experience and to the quality of the product," said William Isaacson, Apple's lead attorney, refuting the claims. Isaacson added that during the time the plaintiffs claimed iPod prices were inflated, storage sizes in iPods went up while prices either fell or remained the same.
