Following a seemingly endless stream of legal challenges and setbacks in multiple European countries over the legality of the App Tracking Transparency feature, Apple won a key court ruling in France today. Here are the details.
France had previously fined Apple over ATT
Since Apple announced App Tracking Transparency (ATT) in 2021, it has been facing multiple inquiries over how the feature works.
In a nutshell, companies such as Meta, as well as advertising and lobbying groups, allege that ATT is anticompetitive, since it doesn’t affect how Apple’s own apps work.
Apple, on the other hand, says its apps and services are built with a privacy-first approach, so the limitations and requirements of ATT don’t apply to them.
Here’s Apple, in a recent statement over these disputes:
“Apple (…) holds itself to a higher standard than it requires of any third-party developer by providing users with an affirmative choice as to whether they would like personalized ads at all. And Apple has designed services and features such as Siri, Maps, FaceTime, and iMessage such that the company cannot link data across those services even if it wished to do so.”
And while this has been an ongoing issue since 2021, it seems that in recent months, things have taken a sharp turn, with regulators increasingly siding with companies and advertising groups that claim that ATT is indeed anticompetitive.
Just last month, Apple was fined in Italy over ATT, which came just a few days after Germany announced that it would look into a set of changes that Apple proposed (under protest) to the feature as an attempt to appease regulatory concerns.
Today’s decision
Today, however, Apple scored a rare win in France, as a Paris court declined to demand Apple halt the ATT feature, in a case brought by a coalition of advertising industry groups. Interestingly, it also comes almost a year after France’s competition watchdog fined Apple €150 million over, you guessed it, ATT.
As reported by La Tribune, the Paris judicial court refused to compel Apple to halt the feature, which in practice means that Apple may continue to display the ATT prompt on iPhones and other devices in the country.
In a statement to La Tribune, Apple said:
“We welcome the court’s decision that rejects these unfounded allegations. (…) This feature has been widely adopted by our users and hailed by privacy advocates as well as by data protection authorities around the world, including in France. We will continue to support strong protections for the privacy of our users.
As would be expected, the plaintiffs confirmed to Les Échos that they intend to keep pursuing legal action against ATT.
Today’s win is as practical as it is strategic, as it may help Apple’s case in other countries by reinforcing the view that the feature is not anticompetitive.
Whether this will be enough to turn the tide on other countries, where courts and antitrust watchdogs seem considerably less sympathetic to Apple’s arguments, remains to be seen.
Do you think App Tracking Transparency is anticompetitive? Let us know in the comments.
Accessory deals on Amazon
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
