На информационном ресурсе применяются рекомендательные технологии (информационные технологии предоставления информации на основе сбора, систематизации и анализа сведений, относящихся к предпочтениям пользователей сети "Интернет", находящихся на территории Российской Федерации)

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Apple presents evidence that plaintiffs did not purchase iPods covered by lawsuit

A billion-dollar lawsuit against Apple fell into doubt after the electronics giant Friday claimed the case is missing a vital piece: plaintiffs who can actually sue the company.

The decade-old class-action lawsuit accused Apple of installing restrictive software in its iPod that prevented the device from playing digital music sold by rivals of its iTunes store. The move, according to the plaintiffs, allowed Apple to corner the market for digital music and led to higher music prices.

But in an unexpected twist, Apple presented evidence late Thursday that the two plaintiffs — Marianna Rosen and Melanie Wilson — didn’t actually buy iPods covered by the suit, sending the attorneys for the plaintiffs scrambling to salvage the case.

The suit specifically covers iPods bought between September 2006 and March 2009 that also ran software released with iTunes 7.0 or 7.4. After Rosen’s testimony on Wednesday, Apple’s lawyers asked to see her iPod and ran the serial number to see whether it truly qualified. That led them to a receipt for the device, which the lawyers said showed the player was bought in July 2009, roughly three months after the class-action period.

Other qualifying iPods Rosen said she bought, the filing said, were purchased by her former husband’s law firm. And Wilson’s iPod, the lawyers said, did not have the versions of software covered by the class-action suit.

“[No] named plaintiff has suffered injury-in-fact,” the company’s lawyers argued in the filing, and therefore have no standing to sue. The lawyers also cited previous rulings that say it’s not possible to substitute another plaintiff in the case.

The attorneys suing Apple have withdrawn Melanie Wilson — also identified in court filings as Melanie Tucker — from the suit, leaving only Rosen as a plaintiff. They also asked the judge to add another plaintiff who was affected by Apple’s move.

“We believe Apple’s latest attempt to derail this case is baseless, and we will be vigorously opposing Apple’s motion,” said Bonny Sweeney, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs in this case. “News of Apple’s last-minute effort to dismiss the case has resulted an outpouring of support from absent class members who were harmed by the anti-competitive conduct at the heart of our case.”

But U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers signaled she not happy about the last-minute surprise.

“I am concerned that I don’t have a plaintiff. That’s a problem,” Gonzalez Rogers said at the end of the trial's third day of testimony in Oakland, Calif., according to the Associated Press.

If the case is thrown out, it would derail nearly a decade of work by the plaintiffs, who even showed a video deposition of former Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, taped just a few months before he died in 2011. The lawsuit is seeking $350 million damages, which could be tripled if the jury finds Apple violated federal antitrust law.

 

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