iPod owners who purchased their iPod between 2006 and 2009 began receiving notices this week that they’re members of a class-action lawsuit accusing Apple of creating a monopoly with the iTunes Music Store.
Members of the class include customers who bought iPod classic, iPod shuffle, iPod touch and iPod nano models between Sept. 12, 2006 and March 31, 2009. No ruling has been made on the case and a settlement has not been reached, but e-mails began going out this week to inform iPod owners of the ongoing dispute, and refer them to ipodlawsuit.com for more information.
The complaint goes back to July 2004. At that time Realnetworks released a work-around dubbed “Harmony” that allowed songs purchased from its music store to be transferred onto the iPod. Apple then released a statement saying RealNetworks had adopted “the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break the iPod,” and warned its customers it was “highly likely” that the Harmony technology would not work with future versions of the iPod software.
Later that year, Apple did indeed issue an update to its iPod software that disabled Harmony. In 2005 RealNetworks admitted to investors that Harmony did put the company at risk of a lawsuit from Apple.
In early 2005, Thomas Slattery filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the company had violated federal antitrust laws and California’s unfair competition law by requiring that customers use an iPod to listen to music purchased in the iTunes Music Store.
Early this month, a pair of settlement conferences were held in the class-action suit, known as “The Apple iPod iTunes Anti-Trust Litigation.” However, no settlement could be reached during those discussions.
iPod owners who have been notified that they are a class member have the right to do nothing and remain a part of the class, or they can ask to be excluded to get out of the lawsuit and receive no benefits from it. Those who wish to be excluded must send an “Exclusion Request,” as detailed on the lawsuit’s official website.