Washington – The Computer & Communications Industry Association joined an amicus brief led by Chamber of Progress that asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to uphold a district court decision that granted Apple a motion to dismiss in AliveCor v. Apple.
AliveCor claims that Apple acted anti-competitively by replacing an application program interface (API) with an improved version. However, the district court rejected AliveCor’s claims, recognizing that Apple’s efforts to improve its wearable technology are precisely the type of innovation that the antitrust laws promote. All companies are “permitted and indeed encouraged to compete aggressively on the merits.” As the Ninth Circuit has made clear, if a “design change is an improvement, it is ‘necessarily tolerated by the antitrust laws,’” barring an abuse of “monopoly power in some other way.”
CCIA has advocated for competition in the tech industry for over 50 years.
The following can be attributed to CCIA Vice President for Global Competition and Regulatory Policy Krisztian Katona:
“The district court recognized that Apple’s efforts to improve its wearable technology are precisely the type of innovation that the antitrust laws promote.
“A competitive wearables market depends on upholding these foundational principles, as does continued robust innovation across technology sectors, so in our amicus brief we urged the Court to affirm these important principles.”
