Lawsuit Over Restricting Apple Products in Amazon Marketplace
Apple and Amazon are facing a new UK opt-out class action seeking more than £900 million ($1.2 billion) over claims that the companies struck an unlawful deal that pushed independent Apple and Beats sellers off Amazon and kept prices higher for consumers.
The claim centers on an agreement from October 2018, from which point it is alleged that Amazon restricted third-party sellers from offering Apple products on Amazon’s marketplace, while Apple gave Amazon better wholesale terms for Apple products sold directly by Amazon as a retailer.
Previously:
- Amazon to End Inventory Commingling
- Amazon Has Ceded Control of Its Site
- Amazon to Give Power to Brands to Remove Fakes
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Would have more sympathy for this lawsuit if I ever saw an instance where an Amazon third party seller sold a popular tech product at MSRP instead of 30-50% more than that.
So is it unlawful specifically because of how much market weight Amazon has? Or because of them allowing some third-party resellers? Can I go to Tesco and require them to _not_ offer a wholesale price to existing suppliers? That doesn't sound practical. There's go to be some extra context that, unfortunately, the press release doesn't seem to get into.
I also feel this misses the context that Apple was fighting counterfeit products on Amazon, and this agreement was — allegedly — intended to help combat those.
