Apple fights to keep DOJ antitrust suit from reaching trial

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“The court is allowed to use common sense,” the government says.

By Lauren Feiner, a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform.

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Photo illustration of Tim Cook in front of gavels.

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Bloomberg, Getty Images

Apple urged a federal judge to dismiss the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against it, saying the government’s complaint includes speculative arguments and the government doesn’t plausibly argue it has monopoly power.

“The court is allowed to use common sense,” countered DOJ counsel Jonathan Lasken at a hearing in New Jersey on Wednesday. “We’re here today based on the idea that it’s not plausible that [Apple] has monopoly power, but instead is at the mercy of supposed global behemoths who are a fraction of its size.”

The government and more than a dozen states sued Apple earlier this year for maintaining an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market, ultimately driving up prices and locking consumers into its ecosystem. It pointed to five examples of its alleged anticompetitive conduct, including degrading message quality between iPhones and Android phones and limiting third-party smartwatch functionality with the iPhone.

Apple has argued the case against it is overly speculative and amounts to a “judicial redesign” of the iPhone. It’s sought to downplay its own influence, saying the government doesn’t allege a large enough smartphone market share to add up to monopoly power. It characterizes the third-party developers who claim they’ve been harmed as “well-capitalized social media companies, big banks, and global gaming developers.”

US District Court Judge Julien Xavier Neals will now have to decide whether the DOJ’s case against Apple can proceed to a trial in its current form, or whether some — or all — claims should be thrown out. He said he hopes to make that decision by January, according to Bloomberg.

The wildcard, of course, is that a new administration will soon take over, with President-elect Donald Trump’s DOJ continuing the case argued by the agency under President Joe Biden. But Trump and likely members of his administration have dubbed “Big Tech” a persistent enemy, and Trump’s DOJ brought suits against other tech companies in his first term — so Apple likely can’t count on a reprieve.

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