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PARAG AGRAWAL VIJAYA GADDE, and NED SEGAL v. Twitter Court Filing, retrieved on April 10, 2023, is part of . You can jump to any part in this filing . This is part 23 of 37. HackerNoon’s Legal PDF Series here ARTICLE X - GENERAL MATTERS 10.1 EXECUTION OF CORPORATE CONTRACTS AND INSTRUMENTS Except as otherwise provided by law, the certificate of incorporation or these bylaws, the board of directors may authorize any officer or officers, or agent or agents, to enter into any contract or execute any document or instrument in the name of and on behalf of the corporation; such authority may be general or confined to specific instances. Unless so authorized or ratified by the board of directors or within the agency power of an officer, no officer, agent or employee shall have any power or authority to bind the corporation by any contract or engagement or to pledge its credit or to render it liable for any purpose or for any amount. 10.2 FISCAL YEAR The fiscal year of the corporation shall be fixed by resolution of the board of directors and may be changed by the board of directors. 10.3 SEAL The corporation may adopt a corporate seal, which shall be adopted and which may be altered by the board of directors. The corporation may use the corporate seal by causing it or a facsimile thereof to be impressed or affixed or in any other manner reproduced. 10.4 CONSTRUCTION; DEFINITIONS Unless the context requires otherwise, the general provisions, rules of construction, and definitions in the DGCL shall govern the construction of these bylaws. Without limiting the generality of this provision, the singular number includes the plural, the plural number includes the singular, and the term person includes a corporation, partnership, limited liability company, joint venture, trust or other enterprise, and a natural person. Any reference in these bylaws to a section of the DGCL shall be deemed to refer to such section as amended from time to time and any successor provisions thereto. Continue Reading . Here About HackerNoon Legal PDF Series: We bring you the most important technical and insightful public domain court case filings. This court case 2023-0409 retrieved on October 4, 2023, from is part of the public domain. The court-created documents are works of the federal government, and under copyright law, are automatically placed in the public domain and may be shared without legal restriction. int.nyt.com

Twitter Sued By Former Executives: Details on Corporate Contracts, Fiscal Year, and More

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On Dextaxation

This paper is under CC 4.0 license. available on arxiv Authors: (1) Kota Chin, University of Tsukuba, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology Japan; (2) Keita Emura, Kanazawa University, Japan National Institute of Information and Communications Technology Japan; (3) Kazumasa Omote, University of Tsukuba National Institute of Information and Communications Technology Japan. Table of Links Abstract & Introduction Preliminaries Proposed Anonymous Yet Accountable Contract Wallet System Implementation Conclusion & References Abstract Account abstraction allows a contract wallet to initiate transaction execution. Thus, account abstraction is useful for preserving the privacy of externally owned accounts (EOAs) because it can remove a transaction issued from an EOA to the contract wallet and hides who issued the transaction by additionally employing anonymous authentication procedures such as ring signatures. However, unconditional anonymity is undesirable in practice because it prevents to reveal who is accountable for a problem when it arises. Thus, maintaining a balancing between anonymity and accountability is important. In this paper, we propose an anonymous yet accountable contract wallet system. In addition to account abstraction, the proposed system also utilizes accountable ring signatures (Bootle et al., ESORICS 2015). The proposed system provides (1) anonymity of a transaction issuer that hides who agreed with running the contract wallet, and (2) accountability of the issuer, which allows the issuer to prove they agreed with running the contract wallet. Moreover, due to a security requirement of accountable ring signatures, the transaction issuer cannot claim that someone else issued the transaction. This functionality allows us to clarify the accountability involved in issuing a transaction. In addition, the proposed system allows an issuer to employ a typical signature scheme, e.g., ECDSA, together with the ring signature scheme. This functionality can be considered an extension of the common multi-signatures that require a certain number of ECDSA signatures to run a contract wallet. The proposed system was implemented using zkSync (Solidity). We discuss several potential applications of the proposed system, i.e., medical information sharing and asset management. —Blockchain, Account abstraction, Contract wallet, Accountable ring signatures. Index Terms I. INTRODUCTION A. Introduction of Account Abstraction Ethereum involves two kinds of accounts, i.e., externally owned accounts (EOA), which are controlled by a usermanaged secret key, and contract accounts (contract wallets), which are controlled by smart contracts. In the current implementation of Ethereum, to run a contract wallet, an EOA must send a transaction to the contract wallet. Then the contract wallet runs a transaction according to the rule specified in the contract. Account abstraction [11] allows a contract wallet to initiate transaction execution, i.e., it can remove a transaction sent from an issuer to the contract. Account abstraction provides two primary benefits. The first benefit is the reduction of gas costs because account abstraction can remove a transaction sent from an issuer to the contract wallet. The second benefit is flexible verification. In the current Ethereum implementation, transactions, issued by EOAs, are verified according to the validity of signatures generated by secret keys of EOAs, and the underlying signature scheme is restricted to the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA). Thus, ECDSA signatures are employed generally when transaction validity is verified in the contract, although, theoretically, any signature schemes can be employed because signatures are verified by programs. In contrast, due to account abstraction, no EOA issues transactions, and thus any signature schemes can be employed more easily to verify transaction validity in the contract. For example, CRYSTALS-Dilithium [15], FALCON [18], and SPHINCS+ [4], which have been selected by the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization, can be employed under the assumption they can be implemented by a program language that can be run by the contract wallet, e.g., Solidity.[1] In addition, account abstraction allows us to employ signatures with rich functionalities, such as accountable ring signatures [10]. Representative examples of systems that support account abstraction include StarkNet [2] and zkSync [3], which are network technologies in Ethereum Layer 2 (L2). Note that L2 is described in further detail in Section II-B. Transactions between the EOAs and contract wallets are removed; thus account abstraction is useful for preserving the privacy of EOAs. In fact, EIP-2938 [11] states that “Privacypreserving systems like tornado.cash” are a motivation to introduce account abstraction (tornado.cash is a mixing service). Concretely, it is expected that account abstraction can hide the issuer of a transaction. Note that a contract wallet typically verifies a signature using a verification key that has been registered in the contract program. Since the verification key is public (in a public blockchain), anyone can identify who issued the transaction (precisely, which verification key is used and the key holder who issued the transaction). In other words, account abstraction does not hide transaction issuer information. We emphasize that unconditional anonymity could promote crime. For example, tornado.cash is a tool that could be misused to facilitate money laundering, and the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service, an agency of the government of the Netherlands, arrested a 29-year-old man in Amsterdam as a suspected developer [1]. This indicates maintaining a balancing between anonymity and accountability is important. B. Privacy on Ethereum Each EOA manages an ECDSA verification key vk, and the corresponding address is a (last 20 bytes of) hashed value of vk (here Keccak-256 hash function is used). Here, as each address appears random,[2] anyone can easily determine whether multiple transactions were issued by the same EOA, although it is difficult to detect the EOA in the real world. This means that issuer privacy is preserved in the sense of pseudonymity in crypto asset trading. When crypto assets are traded between individuals, the pseudonymity level privacy protection might be sufficient. However, some information leakage occurs if a system is implemented using smart contracts. Does Pseudonymity Provide Sufficient Privacy Protection? For example, assume that a request to view patient data is made by a transaction in an electronic medical record system using Ethereum smart contracts [5], [16], [17], [20], [22], [25], [26], [30], [33]. In this case, we assume that multipatient data are accessed from the same address. Then, we expect that the transaction issuing address is managed by a doctor or researcher. In addition, we expect that patients are suffering from similar diseases. Here, if the doctor or researcher associated with the address is identifiable, information identifying the patient’s disease may be leaked (although this was not authorized by the patient) depending on the specialty of the issuer of the transaction. Thus, no information about hospitals and medical offices should be leaked from transactions. However, it is necessary to internally verify who issued the transaction in order to prevent unnecessary access to medical data. In the case of group asset management, pseudonymity level privacy protection would make the investment performance of each address public. Thus, it is desirable to be able to prove the investment performance internally while keeping information about the issuer of the transaction secret externally. Let a pair of signing and verification keys be generated and let all members of a group share the key pair. When a member issues a transaction, the same signing key is used to generate a signature. Then, anonymity level privacy protection is provided because a contract wallet uses the same verification key to verify the signature. However, there is no way to identify who issued the transaction, even among group members. Unconditional anonymity is undesirable in practice because it prevents to reveal who is accountable for a problem when it arises. In addition, determining how to revoke the signing key when a member leaves the group is a nontrivial problem. A Naive Solution 1: Key Sharing. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Key Management Service or a system on permissioned blockchain that support a trusted execution environment (TEE), e.g., Intel SGX, can be used to solve the above problems. By using such services, group members can issue a transaction without sharing the signing key. Here, anonymity still holds because the contract wallet uses the same verification key. In addition, group members can internally identify who issued a transaction via an access log (AWS Key Management Service) or the transaction (permissioned blockchain). Member revocation is also possible via access control to the services. Thus, technically we can provide both anonymity (for outside of the group) and accountability (for the group) simultaneously. However, both methods assume trust in AWS and TEE, which is undesirable relative to increase trust points. A Naive Solution 2: External Services. C. Our Contribution In this paper, we focus on account abstraction, which is attractive in terms of constructing a privacy-preserving system, and we propose an anonymous yet accountable contract wallet system (Figure 1).[3] In addition to account abstraction, the proposed system employs accountable ring signatures [10]. [4] We implemented the proposed system using zkSync (Solidity). Precisely, we implemented the verification algorithm of the underlying accountable ring signature scheme using Solidity. The proposed system is briefly introduced as follows. • To issue a transaction, a ring signature is sent to a contract wallet, and the contract wallet verifies the signature. Then, the contract wallet uses a ring (i.e., a set of verification keys) to verify the signature. Anonymity holds in the sense that the contract wallet cannot identify the issuer among the verification key holders. • The opening functionality of the accountable ring signatures allows the actual issuer to prove that they issued the transaction, and other users can recognize this fact. In contrast, due to a security requirement of accountable ring signatures (i.e., opening soundness), no user can prove that they issued a transaction if they did not actually issue the transaction, and moreover the transaction issuer cannot claim that someone else issued the transaction In addition, the proof can be generated by other ring members who share the secret opening key of the underlying accountable ring signatures. This functionality allows us to clarify the accountability involved in issuing a transaction. We remark that we mainly focus on how to identify/prove who issued a transaction in this paper. That is, we assume that the organization to which the transaction issuer belongs is accountable, and we do not address what penalties that organization would impose on the transaction issuer if the transaction became problematic, or how that organization would be held accountable. • The proposed system allows an issuer to employ a typical signature scheme, e.g., ECDSA, with the ring signature scheme. This functionality can be considered an extension of the typical multi-signatures that require a certain number of ECDSA signatures to run a contract wallet. For example, the contract wallet determines whether one of the issuers belongs to a group (in an anonymous manner), and a specific user (in the usual manner) agrees to run the contract wallet by verifying a ring signature and an ECDSA signature. This is illustrated in Figure 2. In the usual multi-signatures setting, anyone can recognize who agreed with running the contract wallet by observing ECDSA verification keys used for ECDSA signatures verification. Note that if two signatures are sent to the contract wallet separately, one of them must be preserved in the contract wallet which incurs an additional gas cost. To reduce the cost, one sender can collect all of the required signatures, and send them to the contract wallet. D. Applications Potential applications of the proposed system include, but are not limited to, the following. As mentioned previously, when a request to view patient data is made by a transaction in an electronic medical record system using Ethereum smart contracts, it is highly desirable that no information about hospitals and medical offices is leaked from the transactions. Medical Information Sharing. However, it is also essential to be able to internally verify who issued the transaction in order to prevent unnecessary access to medical data. With the proposed system, from the outside, it is possible to hide who is accessing patient data among members in an organization. For example, when a hospital is specified as the organization, it is possible to keep secret which doctors’ offices have access to medical data. If a clinical department, e.g., internal medicine, psychosomatic medicine, or plastic surgery, is specified as the organizational unit, which department is related to which disease is leaked, but no other information is leaked because which doctor accessed the patient data is kept secret. In addition, dividing the organization into independent departments relative to the actual medical offices may further prevent unnecessary leakage of information. Thus, by setting organizational units appropriately, we can control leaked information. In addition, more flexible settings can be realized by using our extended multi-signatures. For example, we can consider a case where the hospital director or a department head must agree to issue a transaction. Here, one person in a medical office needs to agree to issue the transaction. The range of blockchain-based asset management has expanded due to the advent of smart contracts. Thus, the number of investment companies that manage their clients’ funds has been increasing. In some cases, the addresses held by lenders are known publicly. Then, the status of the fund management can be checked.[5] It is assumed that there are cases where multiple users share an EOA as the address, and cases where multiple users employ contract wallets where transactions can be issued with the consent of a certain number of users. In the former case, it is impossible to know who issued the transaction internally. In the latter case, due to the pseudonymity level privacy protection, anyone can check the investment performance of each address. Except for cases where the investment status is disclosed intentionally, such information can be leaked unexpectedly. By employing the proposed system, the investment status of each address is not disclosed externally, and the investment status of each individual can be known internally. Asset Management. [1] Although we consider only signatures in this paper, any verification method can be employed or a contract wallet with no verification step can be constructed. [2] Vanity addresses are often used to reduce the storage cost of addresses. For example, using an address 0x0000..., a part of address “0· · · 0” does not need to be stored. Even in this case, pseudonymity level privacy protection is guaranteed. [3] We used Free Clip Art (http://www.clker.com/). [4] A user (EOA) needs to issue a transaction to a contract wallet when account abstraction is not employed. Thus, information that who issued a transaction is leaked even a ring signature scheme is employed in this case. Thus, both account abstraction and ring signatures are required mandatory in our system. We do not the following one-time deployment case that a contract wallet is newly deployed for issuing a transaction because it is not realistic solution. [5] In fact, these addresses are not disclosed by lenders intentionally. Here, they are assumed to be lenders’ addresses based on the asset management status.

Anonymous, Accountable Contract Wallet System With Account Abstraction: Abstract & Intro

United States v. Apple INC Court Filing, retrieved on March 21, 2024 is part of . You can jump to any part in this filing . This part is 3 of 25. HackerNoon’s Legal PDF Series here II. Defendant Apple 19. Apple is a global technology company with headquarters in Cupertino, California. Apple is one of the world’s most valuable public companies with a market capitalization over $2.5 trillion. In fiscal year 2023, Apple generated annual net revenues of $383 billion and net income of $97 billion. Apple’s net income exceeds any other company in the Fortune 500 and the gross domestic products of more than 100 countries. 20. The iPhone, Apple’s signature product, is the primary driver of Apple’s growth and profitability, routinely commanding profit margins of more than 30 percent on devices alone—significantly higher than its smartphone competitors. iPhone sales have made up a majority of Apple’s annual revenue every year since 2012. 21. Apple increasingly extracts revenue from iPhone users beyond the initial smartphone sale. For example, Apple offers iPhone upgrades, apps and in-app payments, paid digital subscription services (e.g., Apple’s music streaming, TV, news, gaming, fitness, and cloud storage subscriptions), accessories (e.g., tracking devices, headphones, chargers, iPhone cases), and more. Apple refers to these offerings as “Services” and “Wearables, Home, and Accessories,” respectively. In fiscal year 2023, these offerings accounted for nearly one-third of Apple’s total revenue, or four times what Apple earned from selling Mac computers. Some of the largest drivers of revenue within these categories are Apple’s smartwatch, the Apple Watch, and Apple’s App Store, where iPhone users purchase and download apps. In recent years, Services have accounted for an increasing share of Apple’s revenues, while the iPhone has remained the primary gateway through which U.S. consumers access these services. 22. Apple’s U.S. market share by revenue is over 70 percent in the performance smartphone market—a more expensive segment of the broader smartphone market where Apple’s own executives recognize the company competes—and over 65 percent for all smartphones. These market shares have remained remarkably durable over the last decade. 23. Apple’s smartphone market shares understate Apple’s dominance and likely growth in key demographics, including among younger American consumers. For example, one-third of all iPhone users in the United States were born after 1996, as compared to just 10 percent for Samsung, Apple’s closest smartphone competitor. Surveys show that as many as 88 percent of U.S. teenagers expect to purchase an iPhone for their next smartphone. iPhone users also tend to come from higher income households. Because smartphone users generally use a single smartphone to access related products and services, locking up key user groups allows Apple to capture greater spending on iPhone-related products and services, realize higher margins per user as compared to its smartphone rivals, and exercise greater control over developers and other smartphone ecosystem participants. 24. In fiscal year 2023, Apple spent $30 billion on research and development. By comparison, Apple spent $77 billion on stock buybacks during the same year. 25. Apple was founded in 1976. During its first 25 years, the company focused in large part on producing and marketing personal computers. Although the market for personal computers expanded over the next several decades, Apple struggled to gain customer adoption for its higher-priced products relative to its lower-cost competitors, including IBM and Microsoft. In the late 1990s, Apple significantly restructured the company and embarked on a new strategy focused not just on selling personal computers, but also consumer devices like the iPod, which led to the development of the iPhone. Continue Reading . Here About HackerNoon Legal PDF Series: We bring you the most important technical and insightful public domain court case filings. This court case retrieved on March 21, 2024, from is part of the public domain. The court-created documents are works of the federal government, and under copyright law, are automatically placed in the public domain and may be shared without legal restriction. justice.gov

A Deep Dive into Apple's Dominance in the Smartphone Market

United States v. Apple INC Court Filing, retrieved on March 21, 2024 is part of . You can jump to any part in this filing . This part is 2 of 25. HackerNoon’s Legal PDF Series here I. Introduction 1. The Apple Computer Company, as it was then called, was founded in 1976 to make and market personal computers. From its inception, Apple had a knack for expensive, high-end design and niche marketing relative to its competitors. But it struggled to compete against rivals that offered lower prices and more programs. After two decades, Apple struggled to compete against Windows personal computers and by the late 1990s, it was on the brink of bankruptcy. 2. Apple’s fortunes changed around the time it launched the iPod in 2001. Innovative design and savvy marketing had not been enough to drive a successful business strategy. This time, the confluence of several factors made it a smash success. Apple’s iTunes application allowed iPod users to organize their song library and update their iPod. A path clearing antitrust enforcement case, brought by the United States and state attorneys general, against Microsoft opened the market and constrained Microsoft’s ability to prohibit companies like Apple from offering iTunes on Windows PCs. Licensing agreements with the major music labels allowed Apple to offer iPod/iTunes users a wide selection of music for a fee-predownloaded. The iPod experience gave Apple a recipe for the future: a high-end device, a large number of platform participants (i.e., music labels and consumers), and a digital storefront. More importantly, it gave Apple a playbook: drive as many consumers and third-party participants to the platform as possible and offer a wide selection of content, products, and services created by those third parties to consumers. This structure put Apple in the driver’s seat to generate substantial revenues through device sales in the first instance and subsequently the ancillary fees that it derives from sitting between consumers on the one hand and the products and services they love on the other. 3. Apple’s experience with the iPod set the stage for Apple’s most successful product yet. In 2007, Apple launched the iPhone, a smartphone that offered high-end hardware and software applications, called “apps,” built atop a mobile operating system that mimicked the functionality and ease of use of a computer. Apple initially offered only a small number of apps that it created for the iPhone. But Apple quickly realized the enormous value that a broader community of entrepreneurial, innovative developers could drive to its users and the iPhone platform more broadly. So Apple invited and capitalized on the work of these third parties while maintaining control and monetizing that work for itself. The value of third parties’ work served an important purpose for Apple. Indeed, as early as 2010, then-CEO Steve Jobs discussed how to “further lock customers into our ecosystem” and “make Apple[’s] ecosystem even more sticky.” Three years later, Apple executives were still strategizing how to “get people hooked to the ecosystem.” 4. That strategy paid off. Over more than 15 years, Apple has built and sustained the most dominant smartphone platform and ecosystem in the United States by attracting third-party developers of all kinds to create apps that users could download on their smartphones through a digital storefront called the App Store. As developers created more and better products, content, apps, and services, more people bought iPhones, which incentivized even more third parties to develop apps for the iPhone. Today, the iPhone’s ecosystem includes products, apps, content, accessories, and services that are offered by content creators, newspaper publishers, banks, advertisers, social media companies, airlines, productivity developers, retailers and other merchants, and others. As Apple’s power grew, its leverage over third parties reinforced its tight control over how third parties innovate and monetize on and off the smartphone in ways that were anticompetitive and exclusionary. 5. Today, Apple charges as much as $1,599 for an iPhone and earns high margins on each one, more than double those of others in the industry. When developers imagine a new product or service for iPhone consumers, Apple demands up to 30 percent of the price of an app whose content, product, or service it did not create. Then when a consumer wants to buy some additional service within that app, Apple extracts up to another 30 percent, again for a service Apple does not create or develop. When customers buy a coffee or pay for groceries, Apple charges a fee for every “tap-to-pay” transaction, imposing its own form of an interchange fee on banks and a significant new cost for using credit cards. When users run an internet search, Google gives Apple a significant cut of the advertising revenue that an iPhone user’s searches generate. 6. Apple keenly understands that while a community of developers and accessory makers is indispensable to the success of the iPhone, they also pose an existential threat to its extraordinary profits by empowering consumers to “think different” and choose perfectly functional, less-expensive alternative smartphones. 7. Apple’s smartphone business model, at its core, is one that invites as many participants, including iPhone users and third-party developers, to join its platform as possible while using contractual terms to force these participants to pay substantial fees. At the same time, Apple restricts its platform participants’ ability to negotiate or compete down its fees through alternative app stores, in-app payment processors, and more. 8. In order to protect that model, Apple reduces competition in the markets for performance smartphones and smartphones generally. It does this by delaying, degrading, or outright blocking technologies that would increase competition in the smartphone markets by decreasing barriers to switching to another smartphone, among other things. The suppressed technologies would provide a high-quality user experience on any smartphone, which would, in turn, require smartphones to compete on their merits. 9. Apple suppresses such innovation through a web of contractual restrictions that it selectively enforces through its control of app distribution and its “app review” process, as well as by denying access to key points of connection between apps and the iPhone’s operating system (called Application Programming Interfaces or “APIs”). Apple can enforce these restrictions due to its position as an intermediary between product creators such as developers on the one hand and users on the other. 10. This complaint highlights five examples of Apple using these mechanisms to suppress technologies that would have increased competition among smartphones. Suppressing these technologies does not reflect competition on the merits. Rather, to protect its smartphone monopoly—and the extraordinary profits that monopoly generates—Apple repeatedly chooses to make its products worse for consumers to prevent competition from emerging. These examples below individually and collectively have contributed to Apple’s ability to secure, grow, and maintain its smartphone monopoly by increasing switching costs for users, which leads to higher prices and less innovation for users and developers. Apple has used one or both mechanisms (control of app distribution or control of APIs) to suppress the following technologies, among others: Super apps provide a user with broad functionality in a single app. Super apps can improve smartphone competition by providing a consistent user experience that can be ported across devices. Suppressing super apps harms all smartphone users—including Apple users—by denying them access to high quality experiences and it harms developers by preventing them from innovating and selling products. Cloud streaming game apps provide users with a way to play computing intensive games in the cloud. Cloud streaming games (and cloud streaming in general) can improve smartphone competition by decreasing the importance of expensive hardware for accomplishing high compute tasks on a smartphone. Suppressing cloud streaming games harms users by denying them the ability to play high-compute games, and it harms developers by preventing them from selling such games to users. Messaging apps are apps that allow users to communicate with friends, family, and other contacts. Messaging apps that work equally well across all smartphones can improve competition among smartphones by allowing users to switch phones without changing the way they communicate with friends, family, and others. Apple makes third-party messaging apps on the iPhone worse generally and relative to Apple Messages, Apple’s own messaging app, by prohibiting third-party apps from sending or receiving carrier-based messages. By doing so, Apple is knowingly and deliberately degrading quality, privacy, and security for its users and others who do not have iPhones. Apple also harms developers by artificially constraining the size of their user base. Smartwatches are an expensive accessory that typically must be paired to a smartphone. Smartwatches that can be paired with different smartphones allow users to retain their investment in a smartwatch when switching phones thereby decreasing the literal cost associated with switching from one smartphone to another, among other things. By suppressing key functions of third-party smartwatches—including the ability to respond to notifications and messages and to maintain consistent connections with the iPhone—Apple has denied users access to high performing smartwatches with preferred styling, better user interfaces and services, or better batteries, and it has harmed smartwatch developers by decreasing their ability to innovate and sell products. Digital wallets are an increasingly important way that smartphones are used and are a product in which users develop a great deal of comfort and trust as they typically contain users’ most sensitive information. Digital wallets that work across smartphone platforms allow users to move from one smartphone brand to another with decreased frictions, among other things. Apple has denied users access to digital wallets that would have provided a wide variety of enhanced features and denied digital wallet developers—often banks—the opportunity to provide advanced digital payments services to their own customers. 11. By maintaining its monopoly over smartphones, Apple is able to harm consumers in a wide variety of additional ways. For example, by denying iPhone users the ability to choose their trusted banking apps as their digital wallet, Apple retains full control both over the consumer and also over the stream of income generated by forcing users to use only Apple authorized products in the digital wallet. Apple also prohibits the creation and use of alternative app stores curated to reflect a consumer’s preferences with respect to security, privacy, or other values. These and many other features would be beneficial to consumers and empower them to make choices about what smartphone to buy and what apps and products to patronize. But allowing consumers to make that choice is an obstacle to Apple’s ability to maintain its monopoly. 12. Of course, this is not the story Apple presents to the world. For decades, Apple branded itself a nimble, innovative upstart. In 1998, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs criticized Microsoft’s monopoly and “dirty tactics” in operating systems to target Apple, which prompted the company “to go to the Department of Justice” in hopes of getting Microsoft “to play fair.” But even at that time, Apple did not face the same types of restrictions it imposes on third parties today; Apple users could use their iPod with a Windows computer, and Microsoft did not charge Apple a 30 percent fee for each song downloaded from Apple’s iTunes store. Similarly, when Apple brought the iPhone to market in 2007, it benefited from competition among component makers and wireless carriers. 13. While Apple’s anticompetitive conduct arguably has benefited its shareholders— to the tune of over $77 billion in stock buybacks in its 2023 fiscal year alone—it comes at a great cost to consumers. Some of those costs are immediate and obvious, and they directly affect Apple’s own customers: Apple inflates the price for buying and using iPhones while preventing the development of features like alternative app stores, innovative super apps, cloud-streaming games, and secure texting. 14. Other costs of Apple’s anticompetitive conduct may be less obvious in the immediate term. But they are no less harmful and even more widespread, affecting all smartphone consumers. Apple’s smartphone monopoly means that it is not economically viable to invest in building some apps, like digital wallets, because they cannot reach iPhone users. This means that innovations fueled by an interest in building the best, most user-focused product that would exist in a more competitive market never get off the ground. What’s more, Apple itself has less incentive to innovate because it has insulated itself from competition. As Apple’s executives openly acknowledge: “In looking at it with hindsight, I think going forward we need to set a stake in the ground for what features we think are ‘good enough’ for the consumer. I would argue we’re already doing *more* than what would have been good enough. But we find it very hard to regress our product features YOY [year over year].” Existing features “would have been good enough today if we hadn’t introduced [them] already,” and “anything new and especially expensive needs to be rigorously challenged before it’s allowed into the consumer phone.” Thus, it is not surprising that Apple spent more than twice as much on stock buybacks and dividends as it did on research and development. 15. Moreover, Apple has demonstrated its ability to use its smartphone monopoly to impose fee structures and manipulate app review to inhibit aggrieved parties from taking advantage of regulatory and judicial solutions imposed on Apple that attempt to narrowly remedy harm from its conduct. 16. Apple wraps itself in a cloak of privacy, security, and consumer preferences to justify its anticompetitive conduct. Indeed, it spends billions on marketing and branding to promote the self-serving premise that only Apple can safeguard consumers’ privacy and security interests. Apple selectively compromises privacy and security interests when doing so is in Apple’s own financial interest—such as degrading the security of text messages, offering governments and certain companies the chance to access more private and secure versions of app stores, or accepting billions of dollars each year for choosing Google as its default search engine when more private options are available. In the end, Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests. 17. Smartphones have so revolutionized American life that it can be hard to imagine a world beyond the one that Apple, a self-interested monopolist, deems “good enough.” But under our system of antitrust laws, “good enough” is, quite simply, not enough. Consumers, competition, and the competitive process—not Apple alone—should decide what options consumers should have. And competition, not Apple’s self-interested business strategies, should be the catalyst for innovation essential to our daily lives, not only in the smartphone market but in closely related industries like personal entertainment, automotive infotainment, and even more innovations that have not yet been imagined. Competition is what will ensure that Apple’s conduct and business decisions do not thwart the Apple. next 18. Protecting competition and the innovation that competition inevitably ushers in for consumers, developers, publishers, content creators, and device manufacturers is why Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit under Section 2 of the Sherman Act to challenge Apple’s maintenance of its monopoly over smartphone markets, which affect hundreds of millions of Americans every day. Plaintiffs bring this case to rid smartphone markets of Apple’s monopolization and exclusionary conduct and to ensure that the next generation of innovators can upend the technological world as we know it with new and transformative technologies. Continue Reading . Here About HackerNoon Legal PDF Series: We bring you the most important technical and insightful public domain court case filings. This court case retrieved on March 21, 2024, from is part of the public domain. The court-created documents are works of the federal government, and under copyright law, are automatically placed in the public domain and may be shared without legal restriction. justice.gov

The DOJ Sues Apple for Orchestrating a Monopoly in the Smartphone Market 

DOJ স্মার্টফোন বাজারে একচেটিয়া অর্কেস্ট্রেট করার জন্য অ্যাপলের বিরুদ্ধে মামলা করেছে

Das US-Justizministerium verklagt Apple wegen der Schaffung eines Monopols auf dem Smartphone-Markt

El Departamento de Justicia demanda a Apple por orquestar un monopolio en el mercado de teléfonos inteligentes

Le DOJ poursuit Apple pour avoir orchestré un monopole sur le marché des smartphones

स्मार्टफोन बाजार में एकाधिकार स्थापित करने के लिए डीओजे ने एप्पल पर मुकदमा दायर किया

司法省、スマートフォン市場の独占を画策したとしてアップルを提訴

DOJ, 스마트폰 시장 독점 조율 혐의로 애플 고소

O DOJ processa a Apple por orquestrar um monopólio no mercado de smartphones

Министерство юстиции подает в суд на Apple за организацию монополии на рынке смартфонов

DOJ, Akıllı Telefon Pazarında Tekel Kurduğu İçin Apple'a Dava Açtı

DOJ kiện Apple vì sắp xếp độc quyền trên thị trường điện thoại thông minh

美国司法部起诉苹果公司垄断智能手机市场

How Paris Became a Hotspot for Blockchain Innovation: Michael Amar Tells All Ishan Pandey: Hi Michael, I am delighted to welcome you to our "Behind the Startup" series. Can you share the inspiration behind founding the Paris Blockchain Week Summit? Michael Amar: Thank you for having me, Ishan, and pleased to meet you.  Of course, well one of the key reasons back in 2019 for this journey was that I felt I wanted to put Europe on the map regarding eyes on blockchain and the excitement of it, there was not really anything at the time that had a platform to showcase the best of Blockchain. This also includes the fact there were and are so many amazing developers and start-ups, that we could bring all of these elements and more together, in one place. Another key advantage of starting when we did was to run with the flow of regulatory and legislative frameworks, it is a critical part of the progression of the space and we have grown with this development also. Ishan Pandey: With your experience in founding and exiting multiple companies, what lessons have you learned that have been particularly valuable in the blockchain space? Michael Amar: Global thinking. What do I mean by this? Well I feel that specifically in Blockchain, how international the companies are because the teams are usually also spread out all over the World. With this market being relatively thin, you have to think on a Global scale all the time. This I feel is a valuable learning over this short time because you are then prepared and have a solid foundation in your mind and for the company to work in an adaptive and efficient manner. Another key area I would say is valuable is the focus on revenue, it is all very well discussing users, tokens etc. but ultimately the focus of revenue generation and security of that should be highly important. Ishan Pandey: What key strategies have you employed to secure funding for your ventures, particularly in the blockchain space? Michael Amar Actually, I have never raised for any of the blockchain ventures I have been involved in. So besides this point. I want others to realize a deep knowledge of Web2 and expose it to Web3 as much as possible. This I knew would have an impact on start-ups and that if you surround yourself and the space with bright and upcoming companies, including the fantastic existing ones of course, the space will reap the rewards. This is what I love to see which in turn can help boost funding/revenue across the industry and into ventures. Ishan Pandey: The Paris Blockchain Week Summit has become one of the major international conferences in the blockchain field. What challenges did you face in establishing and growing such a significant event, and how did you overcome them? Michael Amar: This is a great question, as many event start-ups probably face similar challenges. From my perspective, of course, it was not easy to start the event in 2019, you are a new event and you need to have trust and confidence instilled in you which, to be honest has two sides. One you have a great team which we have always had, which helps a lot to bridge the trust and processes etc. the other side your speakers and sponsors need to see value, or if you are new, to at least see a clear path. You want the best speakers and attendees, they want you to ensure you execute their strategy for the event and their participation also. The other area of challenge is building the attendance, year on year, bigger and better, for example, 1700 to 6500, to 8500 then more than 10,000, it is a story we have built, we always improve, we grow with the space, it is very rewarding and exciting. The venue choices, scaling and logistics surrounding these choices, how do you remain relevant with all the new markets, the ever-evolving space that we are in, it all comes down to many variables but as I say you have a great cohesive team ethic you will be rewarded and of course building extensive networks that will help you grow as well. Being agile is very important, you have to adapt or react to potential last-minute changes, be in-line with the industry narratives and evolutions, with various market issues that may arise, you just work harder and you aim to be smart and agile. I think these are the key challenges and some of the responses to undertake to counter the challenges. Ishan Pandey: Being active in both B2B and B2C markets, how do you see the blockchain revolution impacting businesses on both sides, and what opportunities do you foresee for entrepreneurs in the space? Michael Amar: I am really focused on the B2B2C co-ordination, I want to see beyond just tokens and crypto or even the speculation behind a lot of it, I want to see the actual utility of blockchain, essentially the blockchain revolution within B2B and B2C markets. So I feel the next big opportunity is what we call real world asset tokenisation, with the usage of crowdfunding 3.0 approach where you could buy tokens within a property or a hotel for example, which could be liquid but you can exchange it, this can be applied to many sectors and many assets, you know, Real Estate, Energy, Healthcare, and this can adapt to every enterprise level which will ultimately drive the B2C users. Ishan Pandey: Paris Blockchain Week Summit focuses on international collaboration. How do you see the blockchain industry evolving on a global scale, and what regions do you believe will be key players in the future development of the technology? Michael Amar: I think we are going to have a few hotspots right? It has changed a lot for sure. In my mind, before blockchain, the epicenter of technology was Silicon Valley, whilst it is still a strong area, it is not the case anymore that it is leading, so for me, you have New York, Montreal, Canada is doing really well, especially in Toronto. Paris is of course rising, Lisbon, Switzerland, especially for the fiscal part of the industry. MENA cannot be ignored either the last couple of years and their continued growth, Dubai another. It goes back to one of your previous questions, it truly is Global and a collective. You can see that we have good healthy collaboration with most events, specifically large international events so we all help each other to develop and especially in a technical way as well. Ishan Pandey: How do you perceive the current bull run affecting the trajectory of the blockchain revolution, particularly in terms of investment trends and technological innovation? Michael Amar: We can see that the bull run brings more money to the table for sure, mostly it also brings awareness not just in the investment sphere but also externally, even to new users or investors currently outside the crypto and blockchain space. We have just scratched the surface, this is why it is highly exciting that at Paris Blockchain Week we present these improvements and evolutions to our audience, you can see it. We grow with the industry and we aim to be a leader of information and networking to be ahead of the game. It is truly exciting! Don’t forget to like and share the story!

Michael Amar Unveils the Vision Behind Paris Blockchain Week: A European Blockchain Revolution

মাইকেল অমর প্যারিস ব্লকচেইন সপ্তাহের পিছনে দৃষ্টি উন্মোচন করেছেন: একটি ইউরোপীয় ব্লকচেইন বিপ্লব

Michael Amar enthüllt die Vision hinter der Pariser Blockchain-Woche: Eine europäische Blockchain-Revolution

Michael Amar revela la visión detrás de la Semana Blockchain de París: una revolución blockchain europea

Michael Amar dévoile la vision derrière la Paris Blockchain Week : une révolution européenne de la blockchain

माइकल अमर ने पेरिस ब्लॉकचेन सप्ताह के पीछे के दृष्टिकोण का खुलासा किया: एक यूरोपीय ब्लॉकचेन क्रांति

マイケル・アマールがパリ・ブロックチェーン・ウィークの背後にあるビジョンを明らかに: ヨーロッパのブロックチェーン革命

Michael Amar, 파리 블록체인 주간의 비전 공개: 유럽 블록체인 혁명

Michael Amar revela a visão por trás da Semana Blockchain de Paris: Uma Revolução Blockchain Europeia

Майкл Амар раскрывает концепцию Парижской недели блокчейна: европейская революция блокчейна

Michael Amar, Paris Blockchain Haftasının Arkasındaki Vizyonu Açıkladı: Avrupa Blockchain Devrimi

Michael Amar tiết lộ tầm nhìn đằng sau Tuần lễ Blockchain Paris: Cuộc cách mạng Blockchain ở Châu Âu

Michael Amar 揭示巴黎区块链周背后的愿景：欧洲区块链革命

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