The Department of Justice (DOJ) is set to sue Apple Inc for allegedly violating antitrust laws by blocking its rivals from ‘accessing hardware and software features of its iPhone’, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The lawsuit could drop as soon as Thursday. Meanwhile, the tech giant’s shares are plummeting. The APPL stock price was about 2% down afterhours, at $176.37 (at the time of writing this report).
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is set to sue Apple Inc for allegedly violating antitrust laws by blocking its rivals from ‘accessing hardware and software features of its iPhone’, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The lawsuit could drop as soon as Thursday. Meanwhile, the tech giant’s shares are plummeting. The APPL stock price was about 2% down afterhours, at $176.37 (at the time of writing this report).
The DOJ lawsuit is exepected to filed in a federal court, Bloomberg added. It comes as the Justice Department is already suing Alphabet Inc.’s Google for monopolization and the Federal Trade Commission has sued Facebook parent Meta and Amazon.com Inc in antitrust cases.
The Biden administration is stepping up on its antitrust enforcement, an official had said earlier. The President signed an executive order in July last year to limit corporate dominance.
“We feel strongly that we are playing a role in our democracy in responding to the will of the people,” Timothy Wu, who played a role in Biden’s antitrust move, said during a speech at the ABA Antitrust Law Section’s annual Fall Forum last year.
“Polls show that the public is truly concerned that the federal government should do more about the power of monopolies in order to make the economy more fair and competitive.”
Apple is yet to respond to DOJ’s reported lawsuit. The Justice Department has already sued the company twice for antitrust violations in the past 14 years – the latest instance being under the Donald Trump presidency in 2019.
