OSNews

It is, and has been for many many years, illegal for a company with a monopoly to price products aggressively with the sole intent to price another competitor into oblivion.

Generally speaking, the monopoly-holding company would need to drop prices below costs for absolute violation of anti-trust law. However, any flexing of monopolistic powers aimed at absolutely destroying the competition is generally illegal.

Be that aggressive contract terms, hiding of certain interoperability information, or what have you.

The rules change once a monopoly is established. They change once again once a court rules that an illegal monopoly exists.

Apple [[c][w]]ould be considered a monopoly based merely on the fact that they have a full monopoly on MacOS X and have been very aggressive in thwarting competition. Thusly, we fall back to sales at retail and Apple's responsibilities in that arena, which is another topic.

Take the case of Microsoft, for years they used simple trickery and targeted price cuts ( bulk-deals, contracts, OEMs ) to build and maintain market superiority. All well and good, except that on more than one occasion those actions were ramped up to target competitors, thereby placing Microsoft into the position of an illegal monopolist.

Apple is doing exactly the same, on a different scale. Sure, they can drop their prices to even make a loss, but if they do so specifically to destroy a competitor, they are violating anti-trust law.

More often than not these cases are handled in the back room under negotiated mediation sessions ( of which I have been a party - albeit not in regards to anti-trust ), so very little case law even exists.

Indeed, Microsoft is almost the only modern example of this nature. And Bush's terrible Attorneys General destroyed millions of dollars in efforts to produce results, leaving even more questions officially unanswered.

In the end, however, blatantly illegal or not, it all depends on one person wearing a black robe to agree that Apple's market position constitutes a monopoly before much of anything can be done in terms of judicial action. Until then, it would merely be fodder in the hands of the enemy and their lawyers.

--The loon