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0 pointsDannyBee6y ago0 comments

It's technically true because there is no real intermediary in apple's case (the "retailer" in your example). It's illusory.

(this is also what the court found)

Also keep in mind that various kinds of price fixing by manufacturers (IE forcing retailers to sell at a certain price) are also subject to antitrust arguments. It's simply no longer "per-se" illegal. For a long time, the precedent was that various forms of price fixing and price maintenance were illegal on their face. YOu didn't have to prove it hurt anyone, only that it existed.

They are now subject to rule of reason analysis (basically, balancing of harms).

The reason such lawsuits are uncommon is not because the price fixing is okay, but because it is incredibly expensive and time consuming to litigate for a very uncertain outcome :)

0 comments

bradstewart6y ago

How is there no "real" intermediary?

To purchase a product I go to an Apple owned-and-operated store, give Apple my credit card, and receive an item that's been packaged and signed by Apple tools from an Apple server.

DannyBeeOP6y ago

I mean (as the court did) intermediary between apple and the consumer. Which you yourself have shown is illusory :)

Apple's claim is in large part that the transaction is not between them and the consumer, but they are basically just off to the side somewhere. Again, in historical precedent like Illinois Brick, that is most certainly correct, and you can bet money the app store was structured in precisely the way it was to try to fall under that precedent.

However, that illusion of being off to the side is clearly false from a practical perspective, as you have shown, and in the end, that is what lost them the case.

Apple took the precedent to the logical extreme, and when you do that, you run the risk of the supreme court saying "yeah, actually, that goes against what we were trying to accomplish in the first place be". Which they did here: in the abstract, they actually say "yeah, we get it, but that that makes no sense in practice".

(Hopefully lyft/uber/etc are paying attention, because they seem to expect the courts to let them take their "we're just app makers" argument to the logical extreme in a different legal context)

jimktrains26y ago

Yes, at the very least it's consignment. Apple plays a huge roll. It's not like Craigslist or the pennysaver where people place ads and everything else happens off platform.

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