Legal

Apple boss forced to testify in long running iTunes anti-trust case

By | Published on Thursday 24 March 2011

Apple

A US judge has ordered the ailing Steve Jobs to give a deposition in relation to an old anti-trust lawsuit regarding iTunes.

The lawsuit relates to the digital music market of 2004 when the major record companies still insisted all downloads came with digital rights management embedded. The only DRMed file format that would work on the market leading iPod was that owned by Apple themselves, AAC files with Fairplay DRM. And the only place these could be bought was the iTunes Music Store, meaning that iPod users were locked to iTunes when buying music from a major label.

One of Apple’s main competitors at the time, Real Networks, launched a bit of software that could convert digital music files from one format to another, so that downloads bought from any of iTunes’ competitors could be transformed into Fairplay AAC files, so they’d work on an iPod. Apple did not like this turn of events, and promptly updated the software that drives an iPod so that files created by Real’s format-transfer system didn’t work.

This all ended up in anti-trust litigation, with Apple accused of acting anti-competitively in forcing iPod owners to buy music from its own music store rather than those of its rivals. And it is in relation to that litigation that US judge Howard Lloyd has insisted Apple chief Jobs gives a testimony, despite him being on sick leave from the IT giant.

Lloyd said this week that Apple had not demonstrated how Jobs giving up to two hours of testimony would result in “undue hardship” for their top man, while adding that “the court finds that Jobs has unique, non-repetitive, first hand knowledge about Apple’s software updates in October 2004 that rendered the RealNetworks’s digital music files once again inoperable with iPods”.

The deposition will be limited to questions about correspondence between Apple and Real Networks in 2004 – Real’s lawyers had wanted the opportunity to question Jobs on a wider range of issues. Apple, which would rather Jobs not be involved at all, can appeal Lloyd’s ruling, though legal experts reckon the company will struggle to have the decision overturned.



READ MORE ABOUT: | |