A Californian has filed suit against Apple, claiming that the company broke antitrust laws by selling songs on its iTunes Music Store which work only with its iPod portable music player. Thomas Slattery is seeking unspecified damages from the company for effectively freezing out other music players from its store, which dominates the online music market.

According to the lawsuit, "Apple has unlawfully bundled, tied, and/or leveraged its monopoly in the market for the sale of legal online digital music recordings to thwart competition in the separate market for portable hard drive digital music players, and vice-versa." In the suit, Slattery was described as an iTunes customer who "was also forced to purchase an Apple iPod" if he wanted to listen to his music on the road.

However, commentators have been quick to point out that the suit ignores some of the features of the digital rights management system used by the iTunes Music Store. In an entry on his blog, Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg noted that "it's hard to imagine this has much merit. Especially since any music purchased at the iTunes store can be burned to CD and then put on any music player."

The iPod, launched in 2001, has an 87% share of the market for hard drive-based music players, while iTunes Music Store recently became the first online retailer to sell 200 million downloads, and, in October, was reported as having a 70% share of the market.

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeiPod.