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Federal judge sides with antitrust enforcers against

Google

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Ruling supports Apple's ( AAPL ) defense in its own antitrust case

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Apple ( AAPL ) argues limiting third-party access is not

anti-competitive

By Ajithkumar Dhevarajan

Sept 24 - Apple ( AAPL ) could be the winner after

Alphabet's , with a ruling that supports the iPhone

maker's defence in its own antitrust court battle with U.S.

prosecutors, legal experts said.

A federal judge mostly sided with state and federal antitrust

enforcers in the blockbuster case on Monday that ruled Google's

search business was an illegal monopoly, but threw out a claim

by several U.S. states that one of Google's ad tools was

designed to give the company an advantage over Microsoft's ( MSFT )

Bing.

That piece could help Apple's ( AAPL ) defense in its own

anti-monopoly case, experts said. The ruling underscored Supreme

Court precedent that companies almost never have a "duty to

deal" with their rivals, said Herbert Hovenkamp, who teaches

antitrust at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law

School. "Any case, including Apple ( AAPL ), in which a duty to deal is a

major portion, is going to get a close look," he said. The

states had claimed Google thwarted competition by failing to

offer key features for rivals' ads through Search Ads 360, a

tool for managing marketing campaigns across multiple search

engines. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta agreed with Google that

it was not required to spur competition by accommodating its

rival. "Their claim requires grappling with a host of questions

that the court is ill-equipped to handle," the judge said.

That part of the ruling is good for defendants, said William

Kovacic, a professor at George Washington University Law School

and former commissioner of the U.S. Federal Trade

Commission. "It also is a reminder that the case is hardly

finished," he said, adding that the case and appeals could take

years. To be sure, Apple ( AAPL ) could ultimately lose billions of

dollars because of the Google case if the judge bans the search

juggernaut from paying the iPhone maker and others to be the

default search engine on their devices. Mehta noted that Google

had paid $26.3 billion in 2021 alone to ensure that its search

engine is the default on smartphones and browsers, and to keep

its dominant market share. But the Google ruling could give

Apple ( AAPL ) a boost in its case where the Justice Department says it

hampered the development of third-party apps and devices. The

company last week asked for the case to be dismissed, arguing

that putting reasonable limitations on third-party developers'

access to its technology did not amount to anti-competitive

behavior, and that forcing it to share technology with

competitors would chill innovation. The judge in Apple's ( AAPL ) case

need not follow Mehta's ruling, though Apple ( AAPL ) may try to use it

to persuade him. The Justice Department will have to show

Apple's ( AAPL ) interactions with developers were more like Google's

payments to device makers, Hovenkamp said. "In order to win, the

government is going to have to point to some kind of agreement,

because then the standard becomes more aggressive," he said.

(Ajithkumar Dhevarajan)