Privacy-focused software provider Proton has filed a lawsuit against Apple, alleging the iPhone maker engages in anticompetitive practices and charges excessive fees in its App Store.
TechCrunch reports that Proton, the company behind privacy-centric apps like Proton Mail, has joined a class-action lawsuit against Apple in the Northern District of California. The suit accuses Apple of holding monopolies in the smartphone, app distribution, and app payment processing markets, and compares the company’s App Store fees to arbitrary tariffs on internet commerce.
In the court filing, Proton argues that evidence from the recent Epic Games v. Apple case proves Apple makes such substantial profits from App Store fees that it calls into question whether the fees are truly necessary to maintain the App Store, as Apple claims. Proton takes issue with Apple’s restrictive policies around payments, such as barring developers from informing customers within their apps about discounts available on the web and threatening to remove apps that don’t support Apple’s payment system.
The suit also highlights how Apple’s single point of app distribution on iOS devices enables dictatorships worldwide to silence free speech by forcing the removal of apps to comply with laws in markets like Russia and China. This policy impacts iOS developers, as exemplified by Apple threatening to remove Proton’s VPN app for claiming to “unblock censored websites.”
Additionally, Proton points out discrepancies in how Apple treats its own apps compared to third-party developers. For example, Proton Calendar cannot be set as the default calendar app on iOS, although users can change default apps for other categories like email and web browsers. Similarly, Proton Drive faces restrictions on background processing that do not apply to Apple’s iCloud service.
Proton CEO Andy Yen stated, “Apple’s monopoly control of software distribution on iOS devices presents a myriad of problems for consumers, businesses, and society as a whole. Anti-monopoly laws exist because the power gifted by monopoly status inevitably leads to abuse. In the case of oligarchic tech giants, these abuses have wide implications for society, and it’s vital to the future of the internet that they be addressed now.”
The lawsuit seeks changes to the App Store and monetary damages, which Proton pledges to donate to organizations fighting for democracy and human rights. This case follows other legal challenges to Apple’s dominance in the mobile app market, such as the Epic Games lawsuit, in which a judge ruled that Apple is not a monopoly but must allow U.S. app developers to link to alternative payment methods without paying commissions to Apple.
Read more at TechCrunch here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
