THE COURT CONFIRMED LEGALITY OF FINE IMPOSED BY FAS AGAINST APPLE IN THE AMOUNT OF 906 MILLION RUBLES

The Arbitration Court of the city of Moscow denied Apple Inc's claim to appeal the decision and the order of the Authority as well as the decision on the imposition of the fine.

It should be reminded that in August 2020, FAS completed consideration of the antimonopoly case against the company initiated as a result of consideration of the application of Kaspersky Lab JSC.

On April 26, 2021, FAS imposed a turnover fine of 906 million rubles on Apple Inc. for violation of antimonopoly legislation*.

The Authority found that Apple abused its dominant position in the market of distribution of mobile applications of other developers on the iOS operating system by barriers that led to the provision of competitive advantages to its own products, simultaneously launching a similar “parental control” service.

FAS also found that the provisions of the Apple documentation contain consistent limitations on the capabilities of third-party developers.

The Authority issued an order to the company to eliminate the violation, according to which the organization must remove from the documentation the provisions that prevent applications from other developers from the App Store for any reason, even if they meet all the requirements, and also ensure that developers of parental control applications can distribute them in the App Store without losing important functions.

The company tried to appeal the decision and the order of the Authority, as well as the decision to impose a fine, but the court of first instance supported the position of FAS.

For reference:

*According to Part 2 of Article 14.31 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation