The jury consisting of 8 people announced a partial verdict, according to which Apple found not guilty of violating US antitrust laws. According to New York Times reporter Brian Chen, the jury felt that the company has limited the access of competitors to the iPod «solely for the purpose of product improvement".
Considered a court case was initiated 10 years ago. As part of the proceedings the plaintiffs claimed that the company deliberately restrict competition in the music market. According to them, a number of earlier iPod models only play music that was purchased from the iTunes Store or loaded from the CD-ROM drive. At the same time competing online stores to download music users could not.
When users download music and tried to sync it to your iPod with your library on iTunes, pop up an error message. Apple advised them to restore the factory settings, but after that the music fades. During that plaintiffs demanded compensation from the company in the amount of $ 350 million.
Former developer iTunes Rod Schultz, who worked at Apple from 2006 to 2007, confirmed that the company really want to block competing services, but these actions were caused by fears of hacker attacks on the operating system, including through the downloaded files on other sites. According to him, this feature players Apple does not have a significant impact on competition.
The court sided with Apple, said that its actions were lawful and purely caused concerns about hacker attacks. Updates that removed the music party services were designed to protect users from hackers with malicious intent.