Welcome to the Tech Mem Ride Home for Monday, May 13th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough.

Today, a Supreme Court ruling might spell trouble for Apple and others.

Amazon is automating the boxers out of a job.

Discord is doing some serious mouths,

what the death of nest means for internet of things and a literal

bit coin treasure hunt here's what you miss today in the world of tech

the United States Supreme Court has ruled against Apple, allowing iPhone users to sue the company

for alleged App Store monopolization.

Apple stock is down more than 5% on the news, though to be honest,

there's a bit of carnage in the stock market overall at the time of this writing.

So it's hard to tell how much of Apple's stock issues

are related to this news or not.

The case of Apple versus Pepper was decided 5 to four with Justice Brett Kavanaugh citing with the four

liberal judges and authoring the opinion in the case.

The plaintiffs in the case argued that Apple's 30% commission on sales made via the App Store

represented an unfair use of monopoly power on Apple's part, resulting in higher

prices for consumers. Apple in turn said that only app developers had standing to make such a claim and sue over it.

But Justice Kavanaugh wrote, quote, Apple's line drawing does not make a lot of sense

other than as a way to gerrymander Apple

out of this and similar lawsuits, end quote.

With the case now proceeding, Apple might be on the line for hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties,

though anyone that runs a similar platform from Facebook to Google to even Amazon might want to start girding for similar lawsuits now.

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