Apple again seeks dismissal of $800 million COVID app lawsuit

Apple rejected the app last year on the grounds it did not come from a recognized institution.

What you need to know

• Apple is again seeking to have an $800 million lawsuit over the rejection of a COVID tracking app dismissed.
• Apple says that a newly-updated complaint has no more merit than the original suit does.
• The developer of the app Coronavirus Reporter says there was no good reason for Apple's rejection save that Apple had its own technology in the pipeline.

Apple has filed to have a freshly updated complaint dismissed in an ongoing lawsuit over the rejection of a COVID-19 tracking app.

As reported by Law360:

Apple urged a New Hampshire federal court to dismiss a retooled complaint from the developer of a coronavirus-tracking app accusing the technology giant of violating antitrust law by keeping the app from its store, saying it did not seek the court's permission for five new plaintiffs to file anonymously.

In a 26-page filing made public Tuesday, Apple argued that Coronavirus Reporter's revised $800 million lawsuit repeated the same allegations made in the original complaint filed in January, that the developer erroneously added five unnamed apps purporting to be plaintiffs, and copied and pasted claims from at least three other pending antitrust cases against the company in the Northern District of California.

Apple was sued at the turn of the year over claims it rejected the app from former NASA cardiologist Robert Roberts, whom the report describes as the inventor of the "gold-standard test" for detecting heart attacks.

Apple reportedly rejected the app because it had made a decision to only accept apps from "recognized institutions such as government, hospital, insurance company, NGO, or a university", stating Coronavirus Reporter lacked "deeply rooted medical credentials".

Apple tried to get the same case dismissed last month, and in this latest filing says the newly-updated lawsuit has no more merit than the original.

The plaintiffs, for their part, allege that the only reason Apple rejected the app in March of last year was that "it had its own application in the pipeline", presumably a reference to the exposure notification API jointly developed by Apple and Google for use in building apps that can track and limit the spread of the virus through contact tracing.