What you need to know
- A court says Apple will have to face a lawsuit filed by the creator of the jailbreak tool Cydia.
- Apple had argued that the claims of antitrust violations and anticompetitive behavior were time-barred.
- A judge dismissed the old complaint but allowed a new one to be submitted which Apple will have 21 days to answer.
A lawsuit against Apple filed by the creator of jailbreak tool Cydia will be allowed to proceed with a new amended complaint, a judge has ruled.
In an order handed down Friday, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers (who also oversaw the Epic Games trial) denied Apple's motion to have the case against it dismissed on the ground's the claims were time-barred.
The ruling states that a new amended complaint filed must be addressed by Apple within 21 days. SaurikIT, the developer behind jailbreak tool Cydia, is suing Apple for violations of federal antitrust laws and competition laws based on the App Store and in-app purchases that Apple uses in iOS 15 and beyond on all of its best iPhones to distribute apps and facilitate payments. The grievances largely fall in line with those of Tim Sweeney and Epic Games. SaurikIT claims that Apple "has created a system where its App Store is the only app store that is available for downloading and purchasing apps on the iPhone, and its in-app purchasing system is the only system for payment processing," claiming a new injury occurs every time a developer agrees to do business with Apple, every time someone buys an iPhone, and with every software update.
The first complaint against Apple was dismissed because it concerned conduct from 2008 and 2009, and the plaintiff has now amended their complaint to allege that Apple is instead complicit in ongoing violations of these laws through "millions" of overt acts that are not time-barred, because they are happening all the time. The Cydia developer claims that between 2008 and 2018 Apple has implemented various software updates that make it impossible to use Cydia on iPhone.
Apple now has three weeks to respond to this amended complaint.
