Apple iPod antitrust case looking more likely to be thrown out

The class action suit brought against Apple by iPod users has entered its fifth day, and chances that the sole remaining plaintiff will be disqualified seem to be growing.

Originally, the class action had two people who claimed damages, but one dropped out last week after Apple attorneys raised doubts about whether that person even owned an iPod during the period in which harm was claimed.

After similar questions were raised about the sole remaining plaintiff on Friday, Apple lawyers asked federal judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to throw out the case. The judge said she’d wait until today to make that decision, But because Apple discovered still more information that might disqualify the plaintiff, the judge decided to put off her decision.

The additional information came from credit card records suggesting the plaintiff didn’t even own the iPods in question.

“We want to win this case on the merit, and we think we’re going to, so we have not pushed to have this decided,” Apple attorney William Isaacson told the judge today.

The remaining plaintiff, a New Jersey woman named Marianna Rosen, represents a class of consumers who say that between 2006 and 2009 Apple used DRM technology to force them to keep using iPod (and not less expensive competing players) in order to keep the music they’d already bought.

If Apple loses the case it will have to pay damages of $350 million, much of which, no doubt, will go to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.