Apple Hit With Another Class Action for Allegedly Monopolizing the App Store

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Apple has created a monopoly with its App Store, restraining and harming competition, stifling innovation, and damaging developers and consumers, a new class action lawsuit alleges.

The nationwide class action lawsuit was filed in Maine on May 17 by lead Plaintiff Primary Productions LLC, which alleges that the tech giant violates the Sherman Act in an “ever-expanding power grab.”

According to the lawsuit, Apple has taken a more authoritarian approach to the App Store and has rejected or disallowed a significant number of third-party applications, showing the company’s “stifling and oppressive greed.”

Primary Productions LLC, a creative studio based in the Ukraine, is representing developers of free apps in the class action lawsuit, alleging that as a “monopsony retail buyer of Apps” Apple underpays developers, even those of free apps, when it disallows them or suppresses their ranking on the App Store “to favor Apple’s own apps or its cronies.”

“Alternatively, we assert that Apple holds a monopoly in the market for smartphone enhanced internet backbone access devices, and therefore improperly excludes developers of free apps from publication,” the class action states.

According to the claim, the apps are rejected from the App Store “to foster Apple’s monopolistic goals, rather than to protect the public from low-quality or illegal applications.”

It adds that Apple employs cronyism when it allows one developer’s app, but disallows similar apps from other developers.

In June 2018, Primary Productions LLC completed an iOS application, which was seven years in the making, the claim states. The app sought to give away blockchain currency to users through an entertaining and educational learning process where users would learn the basics of creating digital wallets, making deposits, and tracking their wallet asset prices.

“The app was completely free to use, funded through sponsorships and media partnerships, and did not subject any user to any form of risk, whatsoever. In fact, users were paid to use the app, in the form of modern digital currency,” the class action lawsuit says.

However, the app was excluded from the App Store “through willful, illegal, and monopolistic behavior conducted by Apple,” the claim states, adding Primary Productions was underpriced by Apple, “the monopsonist retailer.”

As of filing, the claim says that Apple has rejected one million apps in 2021, “representing millions of person-hours of lost work, all to appease the Apple giant.”

According to Primary Productions LLC, the case centers on a form of censorship imposed by Apple, “the extent of which is largely unknown to the public, but evident to nearly every small developer who lives under Apple’s oppression.”

The claim argues that the App Store should not be policing independent developers and inventors and separating them from consumers.

“In contrast to cases like Epic, representing billion dollar gaming companies with expensive law firms like Quinn Emmanuel, here Plaintiffs and the proposed class members are largely small startups who break their back on Apple’s terms to produce free apps consumed by billions,” the claim says.

The class action lawsuit says that anticompetitive business practices have become the norm at Apple, and have damaged “the millions of independent entrepreneurs that serve as the fabric connecting our modern economy.”

Primary Productions LLC wants to represent all U.S. developer-programmers of any Apple iOS application that was excluded from Apple’s App Store. The company is suing for violations of the Sherman Act and breach of warranty, and is seeking certification of the Class, damages, injunctive relief, and a jury trial.

This class action isn’t the only pressure Apple is facing over the management of its App Store. Recently, the tech giant faced allegations of antitrust practices in a Senate hearing and it is currently facing a lawsuit from Fortnite developer Epic Games, which alleges Apple’s 30 percent charges in the app store are extortionate. 

What do you think about Apple rejecting apps from its App Store and charging developers a 30 percent commission fee? Let us know in the comments section!

Primary Productions LLC is represented by Keith Mathews of Associated Attorneys of New England.

The Apple Sherman Act Violations Class Action Lawsuit is Primary Productions LLC v. Apple Inc. Case No. 2:21-cv-00137-JDL, in the United States District Court for the Maine District.

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