Antitrust Class Action Review – 2025

sold iPhones and required app purchases to be made via the App Store. The plaintiffs claimed that Apple charges App Store developers supracompetitive commissions that were passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for app downloads, subscriptions, and in-app purchases. The plaintiffs asserted claims under § 2 of the Sherman Act for unlawful monopolization and attempted monopolization of the iPhone applications aftermarket. In a prior ruling, the court denied class certification, finding that the methodology of the plaintiffs’ expert failed to reasonably ascertain how many class members were unharmed by the alleged conduct and individual questions would predominate. In response to the court’s ruling, the plaintiffs narrowed their class definition to include only Apple account holders who have spent $10 or more on app or in-app content. Using that new definition, the plaintiffs submitted revised expert reports estimating that the proposed class included only 7.9% unharmed members and again moved for class certification under Rule 23(b)(3). In the interval between this ruling and the court’s prior ruling, the Ninth Circuit had rejected the argument that “Rule 23 does not permit the certification of a class that potentially includes more than a de minimis number of uninjured class members” in Olean Wholesale Grocery Cooperative, Inc. v. Bumble Bee Foods LLC , 31 F. 4th 651, 669 (9th Cir. 2022). According to the court in In Re Apple iPhone , the revised model could show the impact of Apple’s allegedly anticompetitive conduct across all class members, and once Apple produces the rest of its app transactional data, the model will be able to calculate the exact extent of injury suffered by each class member. Based on Olean , the court opined that the plaintiffs meet the predominance requirement, and for that reason, it granted the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification. The plaintiffs in Caccuri, et al. v. Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC , 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 93509 (N.D. Cal. May 24, 2024), filed a class action alleging that the defendant’s decision to stop selling digital PlayStation game download cards to third-party retailers was anticompetitive. The defendant moved to deny class certification pursuant to arbitration and class action waiver provisions in its terms of service that the plaintiffs assented to when creating online accounts. The plaintiffs alleged that these agreements did not cover their claims and that the defendant waived its right to enforce the provisions. The court denied the defendant’s motion to deny class certification, stating that there was not sufficient evidence to rule out class proceedings based on the current record. The plaintiffs sought to represent a class of U.S. consumers who bought digital video game content from the PlayStation Store from April 1, 2019, to the present. During this period, several versions of the defendant’s agreements, which included arbitration and class action waivers, were in effect. The defendant argued that the class action waiver in its PlayStation 5 system license agreement and product license agreement should apply to the plaintiffs’ claims, asserting that digital games are included under these agreements. The plaintiffs countered that their claims were related to the purchase of digital games rather than the use of the defendant’s software, and therefore, these agreements are not applicable. The plaintiffs also argued that the defendant failed to provide the effective dates for the agreements, and therefore did not adequately establish which terms were relevant for the class period starting April 1, 2019. The court found that the defendant’s agreements have had multiple updates over time, and their class action waiver language differed between versions, such that there was lack of clarity on which agreement applies to which period. The court found that due to these inconsistencies, the defendant failed to definitively establish that plaintiffs were bound by the class action waivers in these agreements. The court also determined that the defendant’s continued litigation in court, including engaging in discovery and seeking summary judgment, supported the argument that the defendant Sony waived its right to arbitrate. Hundreds of automotive software application vendors in In Re Dealer Management Systems Antitrust Litigation, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 129625 (N.D. Ill. July 22, 2024), filed a class action alleging that the defendants engaged in anticompetitive behavior by limiting data services in car dealerships. The defendants CDK Global, LLC (CDK) and The Reynolds and Reynolds Company (Reynolds) are leading providers of automotive software industry, specifically in the dealer management systems (DMS) market, where they control approximately 70% of the U.S. franchise dealership market. The defendants’ DMS platforms manage critical functions for car dealerships, such as sales and service operations. To enhance their DMS offerings, dealerships often use additional software applications provided by third-party vendors, which rely on access to dealership data stored in DMS to function effectively, but the data is typically raw and needs to be processed through data integration services (DIS), which are offered by both CDK and Reynolds as well as independent providers. The plaintiffs, who compete to sell dealers various applications to assist with management functions, alleged that CDK and Reynolds conspired to restrict plaintiffs’ access to dealer data, which unlawfully eliminated competition from independent DIS providers, leading to inflated prices for data integration services. The plaintiffs sought to certify a class of automotive software vendors who purchased DIS from CDK or Reynolds since October 2013. The

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