5 ms·

> only the people at the bottom make sense as the people > to sue, as when you control distribution carefully like > this, they are the only injured party. Her

> only the people at the bottom make sense as the people > to sue, as when you control distribution carefully like > this, they are the only injured party. Here's the case for manufacturer's standing: the manufacturer (app developer) might argue that the distributor's (Apple's) monopoly on distribution hurts them just as much if not more since the inflated price means they're selling less quantity than they would in a non-monopolized marketplace. Even though they technically set the price, having to pay Apple's rake on the App Store means that they must inflate their prices by at least 30% to bring them back to the price they'd otherwise sell at in the absence of the distributor. In any event, I thought the case was a dog on the merits. How can Apple possibly be a monopolist, despite their 100% share of application sales on iOS, since the relevant market is for app-capable cell phones -- not iOS. Plenty of folks, the majority in fact, vote with their dollars by buying Android devices.

fauigerzigerk 8y ago
The irony is that Google is able to take the exact same 30% cut in spite of allowing side-loading and third party app stores. So I think the class action itself would be difficult to win even if it were allowed to go ahead. Apple could argue pretty convincingly that their app store "monopoly" does not drive up app prices.
DannyBee 8y ago
App developers definitely have standing here (and the 9th circuit opinion says so). They just have a much harder time showing injury (and thus standing) because they are not paying the fees :) Instead, they have to make the indirect argument you do, and it's unclear what the harm is. They are not paying 30% more, the consumer is. There's no data to suggest they are selling less. Who is really injured? The same issue arose in ticketmaster - outside of consumers, everyone else has a really hard time showing injury. Meanwhile, the consumers, who directly pay the monopoly fee, are directly injured.
- ericd 8y ago
  They could always drop their price to the amount they could charge without the 30%, and get supply/demand price sensitivity curves. If a bunch of apps did this, you could get statistically significant data. A law firm could easily pay a number of app makers to try this out in exchange for the data, and then make a huge class action out of this. I think the big challenge is that there are a number of confounding factors, like Apple's ranking algorithms.
  - DannyBee 8y ago
    "A law firm could easily pay a number of app makers to try this out in exchange for the data, and then make a huge class action out of this." I'm not sure you really want law firms doing this. The recent practice of people investing into litigation has not exactly done wonders for anyone.
    - ericd 8y ago
      I don't want it, just saying that it could probably be done.
  - mstolpm 8y ago
    Wouldn’t that „test“ imply that Apple isn‘t doing any kind of marketing/promotions through the 30% cut? At least here in Germany, discounts and boni of 10-15% when buying iTunes gift cards are quite frequent. And these discounts influence at least my app buying behavior. In addition, these discount offers are advertised and so indirectly promote the App Store to millions of people. Developers profit from this in one way or the other. In your test just cutting the 30% „Apple tax“, the developer would still profit from these discounted gift cards. But it’s not the developer giving the discount from his cut, but Apple from the 30%. Moreover, the 30% covers not only handling and processing App Store Infrastructure and sales, but as well the editorial sections of the App Store promoting news apps daily. There already exist reports on how this editorial content boosts app sales. So, your test would still take all this for granted and therefore would be highly skewed. The data would not be „statistically significant“ at all.
    - 8y ago
debt 8y ago
Weirdly it seems no one is arguing about whether or not Apple is a monopoly but rather about who is injured by Apple’s monopolist, out-sized commissions. Or do I have this wrong?
- DannyBee 8y ago
  That is true, but it's because that point in time would not occur yet. The question at this point in time is about standing, which is necessary for this plaintiff to be able to pursue the case. Basically, is this actually the right person to be suing over this (it's pretty complex, and i'm removing a tremendous amount of nuance). Plaintiffs bear the burden of proving standing. However, in most motions about standing and appeals of those motions, all facts will be assumed to be true. This is because most standing dismissal is for "failure to state a claim on which relief can be granted" (FRCP rule 12(b)(6)) . Which means, basically,"even if all the facts are true, you still have no case". So they do the obvious thing, and for the purposes of that motion (and appeals of it, like here), they assume all the facts are true :)

fauigerzigerk 8y ago

The irony is that Google is able to take the exact same 30% cut in spite of allowing side-loading and third party app stores. So I think the class action itself would be difficult to win even if it were allowed to go ahead. Apple could argue pretty convincingly that their app store "monopoly" does not drive up app prices.

DannyBee 8y ago

App developers definitely have standing here (and the 9th circuit opinion says so). They just have a much harder time showing injury (and thus standing) because they are not paying the fees :) Instead, they have to make the indirect argument you do, and it's unclear what the harm is. They are not paying 30% more, the consumer is. There's no data to suggest they are selling less. Who is really injured? The same issue arose in ticketmaster - outside of consumers, everyone else has a really hard time showing injury. Meanwhile, the consumers, who directly pay the monopoly fee, are directly injured.

ericd 8y ago
They could always drop their price to the amount they could charge without the 30%, and get supply/demand price sensitivity curves. If a bunch of apps did this, you could get statistically significant data. A law firm could easily pay a number of app makers to try this out in exchange for the data, and then make a huge class action out of this. I think the big challenge is that there are a number of confounding factors, like Apple's ranking algorithms.
- DannyBee 8y ago
  "A law firm could easily pay a number of app makers to try this out in exchange for the data, and then make a huge class action out of this." I'm not sure you really want law firms doing this. The recent practice of people investing into litigation has not exactly done wonders for anyone.
  - ericd 8y ago
    I don't want it, just saying that it could probably be done.
- mstolpm 8y ago
  Wouldn’t that „test“ imply that Apple isn‘t doing any kind of marketing/promotions through the 30% cut? At least here in Germany, discounts and boni of 10-15% when buying iTunes gift cards are quite frequent. And these discounts influence at least my app buying behavior. In addition, these discount offers are advertised and so indirectly promote the App Store to millions of people. Developers profit from this in one way or the other. In your test just cutting the 30% „Apple tax“, the developer would still profit from these discounted gift cards. But it’s not the developer giving the discount from his cut, but Apple from the 30%. Moreover, the 30% covers not only handling and processing App Store Infrastructure and sales, but as well the editorial sections of the App Store promoting news apps daily. There already exist reports on how this editorial content boosts app sales. So, your test would still take all this for granted and therefore would be highly skewed. The data would not be „statistically significant“ at all.
  - 8y ago

debt 8y ago

Weirdly it seems no one is arguing about whether or not Apple is a monopoly but rather about who is injured by Apple’s monopolist, out-sized commissions. Or do I have this wrong?

DannyBee 8y ago
That is true, but it's because that point in time would not occur yet. The question at this point in time is about standing, which is necessary for this plaintiff to be able to pursue the case. Basically, is this actually the right person to be suing over this (it's pretty complex, and i'm removing a tremendous amount of nuance). Plaintiffs bear the burden of proving standing. However, in most motions about standing and appeals of those motions, all facts will be assumed to be true. This is because most standing dismissal is for "failure to state a claim on which relief can be granted" (FRCP rule 12(b)(6)) . Which means, basically,"even if all the facts are true, you still have no case". So they do the obvious thing, and for the purposes of that motion (and appeals of it, like here), they assume all the facts are true :)