A federal judge in Seattle has ruled that Apple and Amazon must face a consumer antitrust lawsuit in a US court.
The lawsuit accuses the two tech giants of colluding to artificially inflate the prices of iPhones and iPads sold on Amazon’s platform.
The judge rejected Apple and Amazon’s attempts to dismiss the class action, stating that the validity of the relevant market is a matter for a jury to decide.
The lawsuit, filed in November 2022, alleges that an agreement between Apple and Amazon in 2019 limited the number of competitive resellers, violating antitrust laws.
Apple argues that the agreement aimed to prevent the sale of counterfeit Apple products on the e-commerce platform and is lawful according to previous court rulings. The case will now proceed to evidence-gathering and pretrial proceedings.
