Apple was awarded a patent in 2020 record €1.1 billion fineFrance ($1.2 billion) for antitrust violations with two wholesalers. Now, the Paris court of appeals has reduced the penalty by two thirds to just €371.6 million ($364.6 million today), ReutersThis has been reported. The court found that the original fine was excessive and reduced it to a level that “ensures that the penalties are repressive, dissuasive.”
According to the original complaint Apple and its distributor partners Ingram Micro, and Tech Data, agreed not to compete against each other, “thereby sterilizing wholesale markets for Apple products.” Other premium distributors were forced to maintain high prices to compete with integrated distributors. Apple announced immediately plans to appeal the decision. They called it “disheartening” as well as stating that it had discarded 30 years worth of French legal precedent.
Apple isn’t satisfied yet, telling BloombergIt plans to appeal to France’s highest court to remove the entire fine. France’s antitrust agency (l’Autorité de la concurrence) is also considering an appeal. “We want to reiterate our desire to ensure the dissuasiveness of our penalties, particularly when it concerns market participants of the calibre of [big tech companies],” said l’Autorité communications director Virginie Guin.
The reduction is part a ongoing battle between France’s EU and Silicon Valley tech firms. Last year, Google was fined €500 million over its news dominance in France, and recently lost an appeal in a €4.34 billion EU antitrust case over its Android system dominance, though the fine was reduced to €4.12 billion ($4.04 billion).
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