10-6-2023 (SEATTLE) Apple and Amazon.com have been ordered by U.S. District Judge John Coughenour to face a consumer antitrust lawsuit in a Seattle court. The lawsuit accuses the two tech giants of colluding to artificially inflate the prices of iPhones and iPads sold on Amazon’s platform. The judge’s ruling on Thursday rejected Apple and Amazon’s attempts to dismiss the class-action lawsuit on various legal grounds.
Coughenour emphasized that the “validity” of the relevant market, a crucial aspect in antitrust litigation, should be determined by a jury. The lawsuit, filed in November, is one of several legal actions, both private and government-led, challenging Amazon’s pricing practices. The judge’s decision means that the case will proceed to evidence-gathering and other pretrial proceedings.
Representatives for Apple and Amazon, as well as their respective legal teams, have not yet commented on the ruling.
Steve Berman, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, hailed the court’s decision as “a major win for consumers of Apple phones and iPads.”
The plaintiffs are U.S. residents who purchased new iPhones and iPads from Amazon starting in January 2019. They argue that an agreement between Apple and Amazon, which took effect that year, violated antitrust regulations by limiting the number of competitive resellers.
According to the lawsuit, there were approximately 600 third-party Apple resellers on Amazon in 2018. The plaintiffs allege that Apple and Amazon reached an agreement whereby Amazon received a discount on Apple products in exchange for reducing the number of Apple resellers on its marketplace.
Apple has contended that the agreement with Amazon aimed to curb the sale of counterfeit Apple products on the e-commerce platform by restricting the number of authorized resellers. In a court filing, Apple’s attorneys argued that such agreements were “commonplace” and deemed procompetitive and lawful by the Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit.
The judge in Seattle stated that the “countervailing” motivations behind the Apple-Amazon agreement would be addressed in later stages of the litigation.
Apple reported sales of $94.8 billion in the second quarter, while Amazon disclosed $127.4 billion in its most recent earnings report.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified triple damages and additional relief. The case is titled Steven Floyd v Amazon.com Inc and Apple Inc, U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington, No. 2:22-cv-01599-JCC.
