Lazar Radic on the DOJ’s Apple Case

ICLE Senior Scholar Lazar Radic was quoted by The Drum in a story about the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against Apple. You can read the full piece here.

But another concern about the case’s strength is raised by Lazar Radic, a professor of law and a senior scholar of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics. The case “seems slightly outdated,” Radic says.

In particular, he suggests that some of the issues raised by the plaintiffs appear to have been recently remedied. “One example is the cloud services complaint, which is accusing Apple of suppressing mobile cloud streaming services. Apple changed its policy on [cloud gaming services] earlier this year, to an extent that would address this [concern].”

…The DOJ, in its complaint, would seem to be grasping at straws on this front, Radic suggests. “The DOJ’s complaint is that the color of the text bubbles is different, which disadvantages Android [users]. Apple did address … the downgraded experience when messaging non-iPhone phones. But the DOJ seems to be saying that that’s not enough because having different colors for the bubbles of text still disadvantages non-iPhone users.”

…In addition to what Radic deems “outdated” complaints, others have pointed out that the DOJ’s case omits a handful of concerns that have been at the heart of other antitrust suits against Apple.