A US court has been told that Apple uses thuggish tactics and its monopolistic position to force rivals out of the MP3 market.

MP3 maker Luxpro said that Apple is running an abusive monopoly and filed charges in an Arkansas court. Luxpro was originally founded in December 2002, and in January 2004 released the EZ Share MP3 player.  In March 2005, at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany ,it unveiled its new model, the Super Shuffle MP3 player, which Apple thought looked too much like its Ipod Shuffle. Apple took out an injunction, and Luxpro responded by renaming its player the Super Tangent.

When Apple could not use legal means to stop the product, Luxpro claims, it resorted to thuggish tactics to put Luxpro out of business, Luxpro said. First, Apple hired a third party to purchase a Super Tangent from Luxpro. It also obtained copies of two proprietary Luxpro price lists. Apple then began to send  LuxPro threatening letters, demanding that it remove its players from the market.

Luxpro has beaten Apple in court once before in a case that got as far as the Taiwanese Supreme Court.

According to court information, while Apple's over-reaching injunctions were on appeal, Apple sent warning letters to other companies doing business with Luxpro, demanding that they cease. One such company was Intertan, a subsidiary of US-based consumer electronics giant Circuit City, which was told to drop Luxpro's MP3 players from its retail shelves.

This pressure caused Intertan to destroy 4,500 Luxpro players and stop placing orders with the company. Radio Shack and Best Buy also stoped doing business with Luxpro. Similar demands were sent to Singapore's Orchard Company, Japan's Kaga Electronics, and Germany's Web Worker, who put them in the rubbish bin. Asustek and Synnex were told by Apple to pressure Luxpro's distributors, including Carrefour, ET Mall, EUPA, and 3C.

If the court agrees that such tactics are underhand, then there are apparently a number of other small companies waiting in the wings to launch similar cases. X

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