A jury of eight people decided that Apple did not violate antitrust law in a decade-old case that alleged the company illegally locked users into its music ecosystem using DRM in iTunes and the iPod.
Following a trial that spanned the past two weeks and included a videotaped deposition from the company’s late co-founder, Steve Jobs, the jury found that Apple’s behavior did not harm consumers, according to a report by The Verge.
The jurors took just a day to return their decision, saying that the updates in iTunes 7.0, which were at issue in the case, were a “genuine product improvement” that benefited users. It’s good news for Apple, which was facing up to $1 billion in damages if the jury found the company guilty of violating antitrust law.
The plaintiffs in the case faced an uphill battle with a number of setbacks, including allegations that the plaintiffs didn’t actually have devices covered under the lawsuit which led to one of them dropping out of the case entirely.
Apple didn’t exit the case unscathed: testimony revealed that the company deleted songs from users’ iPods that were purchased from outside services from 2007 to 2009, though Apple successfully argued that those moves were a result of security upgrades it needed to perform to stay within its contracts with record companies.
The company isn’t out of the woods yet. Attorneys for the plaintiffs say that they plan to appeal the decision.
