Jury unanimously declares Apple innocent of iPod antitrust charges

An eight person jury in a federal court in Oakland, California has declared Apple innocent of antitrust charges leveled at it by a group of iPod users. The decision was unanimous.

In the class action suit, the plaintiffs had claimed that Apple had blocked them from downloading music from non-iTunes music services to their iPods between 2006 and 2009. Attorneys from both sides wrapped up their closing arguments Monday afternoon, and returned a verdict Tuesday.

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The case, which dated back a decade, centered around the question of whether a 2006 DRM software update to iTunes was a regular old upgrade — or was designed and timed simply to knock music from other services off users’ iPods. Apple didn’t deny that some iPods were wiped of the foreign content, but it denied that that was the intended result of the upgrade.

Apple’s attorneys argued that the 2006 upgrade — called iTunes 7.1 — added security and other new features like video support. Apple also argued that the opposing side failed to produce enough people who were actually harmed.

Plaintiff’s attorneys were on the hook to prove that a 2005 memo from Jobs to iTunes product manager Jeffrey Robbin was the first cause of Apple’s move to issue the new upgrade. “Jeff we may have to change things here … ” is the only relevant text from the email. Jobs was reacting to news that a small software company had produced a piece of software that would allow iPod users to download files from music sites other than Apple’s.

The burden of proof was on the plaintiffs, and it proved to be too much of a burden. Had Apple lost it would have been on the hook to pay $350 million in damages.