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US Antitrust
A federal judge on Monday rebuffed Apple's request to throw out a US government lawsuit alleging the technology trendsetter has built a maze of illegal barriers to protect the iPhone from competition and fatten its profit margins. The 33-page opinion from US District Judge Xavier Neals in New Jersey will enable an antitrust lawsuit that the US Justice Department filed against Apple 15 months ago to proceed. Neals has set a timetable that could see the case come to trial in 2027. Apple has sought to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing the Justice Department had distorted the contours of the smartphone market and made a series of other misinterpretations that warranted the case be thrown out. But Neals decided there is enough evidence to support the Justice Department's market definitions and concluded the case's key allegations merited further examination at trial. The case seeks to pierce the digital fortress that Apple Inc, based in Cupertino, California, has built around the iPhone, iP
Lawyers for both the Department of Justice and Google will present arguments on Thursday and Friday to conclude the biggest antitrust case in a quarter century. In closing arguments of a Washington, DC, trial that began last September, regulators will apply the finishing touches to a case alleging Google has turned its search engine into an illegal monopoly that stifles competition and innovation. Regulators claim that Google competed unfairly when it made lucrative deals with Apple and other companies to automatically lock its search engine into smartphones and web browsers. Meanwhile, Google maintains that consumers use its dominant search engine because it is the best available option. Google pays more than USD 10 billion per year for these privileged positions,' argued Kenneth Dintzer, the Justice Department's lead litigator, last September. Google's contracts ensure that rivals cannot match the search quality ad monetisation, especially on phones." Prabhakar Raghavan, Google's
The Justice Department on Thursday announced a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Apple, accusing the tech giant of engineering an illegal monopoly in smartphones that boxes out competitors and stifles innovation. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, alleges that Apple has monopoly power in the smartphone market and uses its control over the iPhone to engage in a broad, sustained, and illegal course of conduct. The lawsuit which was also filed with 16 state attorneys general is the latest example of the Justice Department's approach to aggressive enforcement of federal antitrust law that officials say is aimed at ensuring a fair and competitive market, even as it has lost some significant anticompetition cases. President Joe Biden has called for the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to vigorously enforce antitrust statutes. The increased policing of corporate mergers and business deals has been met with resistance from some business leaders who have
Amazon is heading into one of its biggest sales events of the year Prime Day with a lawsuit hanging over its head that accuses it of preventing sellers from hawking their merchandise at lower prices on other sites. The Federal Trade Commission's long-awaited antitrust case is the agency's most aggressive move yet to tame the market power of Amazon, a company that's become synonymous with online shopping and fast deliveries. Under chair Lina Khan, the agency hasn't been shy about taking big swings against some of America's biggest companies and testing the limits of competition law to reverse what many of her supporters see as decades of weak antitrust enforcement. But that approach has also led to some high-profile setbacks, most notably in the FTC's bid to block Microsoft's takeover of Activision Blizzard and Meta's acquisition of the virtual reality startup Within Unlimited. The FTC is appealing the judge's ruling in the Microsoft case. The Amazon case, which was backed by 17 .