{Apple is headed to court today to defend against allegations that it \u201cabused a monopoly position in the digital music player market\u201d, in a class action lawsuit in California that could cost the company $1 billion, reports Reuters.}<\/p>\n
The case in question was brought forward by a group of businesses and individuals who bought iPods between 2006 and 2009, who claim that a 2006 iTunes software update locked music purchased on iTunes so that it could only be played on Apple\u2019s portable music players.<\/p>\n
The update also barred RealPlayer music from iPods, which posed a problem for those who owned RealPlayer content, and that discouraged plaintiffs from upgrading to a competing device.<\/p>\n
To put it more simply, those who bought music on iTunes and RealPlayer wouldn\u2019t be able to listen to RealPlayer content on their iPods, and switching to a different device would lock them out of their iTunes libraries.<\/p>\n
The group is seeking $350 million in damages, which, under antitrust laws, automatically triples to over $1 billion.<\/p>\n
Apple says that its iTunes software update included genuine product improvements and shouldn\u2019t be construed as anti-competitive.<\/p>\n
Emails and taped deposition excerpts from the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs are expected to be entered into evidence, and top executives Eddy Cue and Philip Schiller are scheduled to testify at Tuesday\u2019s trial in Oakland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Apple is headed to court today to defend against allegations that it \u201cabused a monopoly position in the digital music player market\u201d, in a class action lawsuit in California that could cost the company $1 billion, reports Reuters.} The case in question was brought forward by a group of businesses and individuals who bought iPods […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000055269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-17660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000055269,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton17660.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton17660.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton17660.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton17660.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton17660.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton17660.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000055269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17660"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=17660"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=17660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}