The Justice Department in Washington and 15 US states sued Apple on Thursday, accusing the company of using high demand for the iPhone and its other products to raise prices for its services and drive smaller competitors out of the market. , reports Reuters.

Apple thus joins a list of major tech companies that have been sued by US regulators in recent years, among the giants accused of anti-competitive practices by both the current administration of President Joe Biden and the previous administration of Donald Trump, including Meta Platforms, a company founded and is run by Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

“Consumers should not have to pay higher prices because companies are violating antitrust laws,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press release.

“If left, Apple will continue to strengthen its smartphone monopoly,” he added in a press release.

The US Department of Justice accuses Apple of using its market position to extract more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, small businesses and merchants.

The 88-page complaint, filed in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, says the government’s actions against Apple are aimed at “liberating the smartphone market from Apple’s anti-competitive and exclusive conduct and restoring competition to lower smartphone prices for consumers, lower fees for developers and preserving innovation for the future.”

The complaint also states that “Apple has repeatedly chosen to make its products worse for consumers.”

Apple denies the US government’s allegations

The Tim Cook-led company has already responded to the allegations in the complaint, stating in its own press release that:

“This lawsuit threatens our identity and the principles that differentiate Apple products in highly competitive markets. If successful, it would harm our ability to create the technology people expect from Apple, where hardware, software and services intersect.”

Apple’s share price on the New York Stock Exchange fell 3% after the announcement by the Department of Justice.

The Reuters agency reminds that Apple has already been the object of investigations into anti-competitive practices in Europe, Japan and South Korea, as well as the object of lawsuits by companies such as Epic Games.

One of Apple’s most profitable businesses, its virtual App Store, which charges developers a 30% commission, has already survived a massive lawsuit filed in the US by Epic Games, maker of the online video game Fortnite.

While that lawsuit determined that Apple did not violate US antitrust laws, a federal judge ordered the Tim Cook-led company to allow links and “buttons” that allow direct payments to developers without the fees charged by the App Store.