Apple’s legal battle with music app Musi - which it kicked out of its App Store last year - has escalated somewhat. Not only does Apple want the court to dismiss the app developer’s lawsuit, it also wants the judge to sanction Musi and its lawyers for allegedly making false claims in an amended complaint.
And this bad conduct is nothing new, Apple says in a new legal filing. Apple has had various dealings with Musi’s lawyers over the years because of past complaints relating to the app repurposing music from YouTube. When dealing with those past complaints, Apple claims, Musi’s lawyers made misleading statements and even used a faked email from Universal Music to make one complaint go away.
That allegedly faked email is provided with Apple’s latest legal filing. Universal had complained about how the Musi app worked and was pushing for its removal from the App Store. But then, in the December 2019 email provided to Apple by Musi, the major’s Senior Director, Content Protection Jason Miller, seemingly wrote, “the changes to your app as per your comments appear to satisfy our concerns”.
However, a later email from Danielle B Hardy, Associate Director of Legal in Universal’s Content Protection unit - also shared with the court - stated that, “Jason Miller has no record of sending any emails to the app developer and the email address that was cited is not a UMG email address”.
“It appears that the app developer created a false email to misrepresent compliance on behalf of Universal”, Hardy’s message continued. As a result, she clarified, Universal’s complaint against Musi had not been resolved and the major still wanted the app to be removed from the App Store.
Apple’s bid to have Musi and its law firm Winston & Strawn LLP sanctioned specifically relates to what they have written in an amended version of their lawsuit.
Apple and Musi exchanged some documents prior to the amended claim being submitted and, the tech giant argues, that process “thoroughly disproved Musi’s baseless conspiracy theory that Apple schemed to eliminate the Musi app from the App Store to benefit ‘friends’ in the music industry”. And yet, it says, Musi continues to make that allegation, while also misrepresenting past conversations and communications.
Musi sources its music from YouTube instead of negotiating its own licensing deals with the music industry. It strips out YouTube’s ads in the process, offering users a free version of its service, where it inserts its own ads, or a premium ad-free subscription package.
The music industry has long argued that Musi breaches YouTube’s terms and conditions, and likely infringes the copyrights of record labels and music publishers. That resulted in formal complaints from the majors, their trade bodies, and ultimately YouTube itself, with Apple being urged to remove Musi from its App Store. Which it finally did last year. Musi then sued in a bid to get itself restored to the Apple platform.
Apple argues that, under its terms, it is allowed to remove apps “at any time, with or without cause”. And that position was endorsed by Judge Eumi K Lee earlier this year when she declined to issue a preliminary injunction ordering Apple to restore the Musi app while this litigation goes through the motions.
But even if that wasn’t the case, Apple says, there were grounds for removing Musi from the App Store because of the various complaints from music companies and YouTube. It argues that documents shared during discovery demonstrate this fact, but Musi continues to claim otherwise in its amended complaint.
Musi “baselessly alleges that a July 2024 phone call between Apple and YouTube was part of a ‘backchannel scheme to cook up a supposed reason to remove the Musi app’ from the App Store”, Apple’s new legal filing states, even though “Musi is well aware that Apple had the contractual right to remove the app at its discretion and had no need to ‘cook up’ any complaint from YouTube”.
“Moreover”, Apple says, “multiple complaints were already pending against Musi’s app, including, among others, unresolved complaints from YouTube that the Musi app violated YouTube’s user terms of service”.
But Musi’s amended complaint “seeks to deceive the court by omitting key information, including about the many consistent complaints levied against the Musi app by rightsholders, and the repeated dishonesty of Musi and its counsel when responding to complaints”.
And while Musi still “contends” that earlier complaints cited by Apple had been “closed because they lacked merit”, in fact “the record shows otherwise”. To that end, the amended complaint “misleadingly omits substantial evidence regarding those complaints, including evidence that it was Musi and its counsel - not Apple - that engaged in bad faith conduct in relation to disputes about Musi’s app”.
Which is why Apple wants Musi sanctioned by the court. Musi hasn’t yet responded but, given past legal filings, that response will probably be bullish in the extreme.