The same week that fresh legal proceedings against Apple commenced regarding its App Store policies, the iPhone maker and Amazon have successfully defeated another mass lawsuit against them.
The lawsuit related to alleged collusion between them to remove resellers of new Apple products from Amazon’s website, reported Reuters.
It was brought against the two companies in the UK by consumer law academic Christine Riefa on behalf of around 36 million British consumers who had bought Apple or Beats products.
Riefa’s lawyers alleged that Apple and Amazon reached an agreement in 2018 to bar the vast majority of resellers of Apple and Beats-branded products from Amazon’s marketplace in the UK, reducing competition for those products.
In return, Apple is alleged to have offered Amazon preferential wholesale prices on all Apple and Beats products, which it could sell directly to customers via its own retail business.
The claim alleges that by January 2019, almost all independent merchants of Apple and Beats products disappeared from the Amazon marketplace as a result of Apple and Amazon’s collusion.
This led to a decrease in the discounts provided to customers by the limited number of independent merchants remaining, and a significant increase in the sales of Apple and Beats products at undiscounted prices.
Apple and Amazon said the case, valued at 494 million pounds (A$974.02 million) plus interest, was without merit and asked the Competition Appeal Tribunal to block it from proceeding.
The tribunal ruled in their favour saying that the case could not continue. “Our key concern in this case is that Prof Riefa has not demonstrated sufficient independence or robustness so as to act fairly and adequately in the interests of the class,” it said in its judgement.
In the sperate case against Apple regarding its App Store which ChannelNews has covered here, a legal battle is underway in the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal where it is being alleged that Apple is abusing its dominant position in the app market and that its 30% commission fee is in breach of European and UK competition laws. That A$2.96 billion lawsuit is being brought by Dr Rachael Kent, an academic at King’s College London, on behalf of around 19.6 million iPhone and iPad users in the UK.
