Apple Monopoly Lawsuit in China First Instance Result

TapTechNews May 29, according to China Business News, on May 29, the Shanghai Intellectual Property Court announced the first-instance judgment result of China's first consumer lawsuit against 'Apple' for monopoly. The court determined that Apple has a dominant market position in the Chinese software market, but has not abused this position and rejected the plaintiff Jin's lawsuit request.

TapTechNews learned through search that in early 2021, when a Shanghai user Jin purchased an App in the Apple App Store on his mobile phone, he found that he could only choose ApplePay as the only payment method, and could not choose common mobile payment methods such as WeChat Pay and Alipay. At the same time, the user found that since developers need to pay Apple a 30% commission of the transaction amount (that is, the 'Apple tax'), so for the same application product, the purchase price of consumers in the Apple App Store is higher than the purchase price in the Android App Store.

The user believes that Apple and Apple Shanghai have abused their market position and implemented tying, refusal to deal, restricted dealing and unfair high-price behavior, and made huge profits in the Chinese market by harming the interests of consumers.

For this reason, Jin filed a lawsuit with the court - requiring the two companies to immediately stop the behavior of abusing the market dominant position, etc., compensate for economic losses of 100,000 Chinese yuan, and publish an apology statement in newspapers such as the China Intellectual Property News and the Legal Daily and on the official website of Apple China. The Shanghai Intellectual Property Court filed the case on February 2, 2021.

The plaintiff's attorney said that he respects the judgment result of the first-instance court, but will appeal this case to the Supreme People's Court.