French Competition Authority Fines Apple €150 Million for Anticompetitive App Tracking Transparency
PARIS – The French Competition Authority fined Apple €150 million for abusing its dominant market position to impose unfair and asymmetrical conditions on iOS app publishers and ad tech services providers through its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework. The ruling follows a complaint brought by a coalition of digital associations represented by Fayrouze Masmi-Dazi and other lawyers notably Umberto Valenza at HBSS France law firm.
The complaint was filed by Le GESTE, the SRI, the IAB France and the MMA France united within the Alliance Digitale, and the UDECAM. The associations together represent more than 500French media and digital companies harmed by Apple’s conduct.
Introduced in France and Europe in April 2021, the ATT framework consists of a set of legal, technical and commercial restrictions to data access and displaying a standardized pop-up requiring user authorization before allowing publishers and their advertising partners to access Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) which contains user profiling data. However, the French Competition Authority found that ATT created an excessive burden on third-party app publishers, while Apple’s own services were judged non compliant with EU and French privacy laws and faced far fewer restrictions, effectively penalizing publishers and advertisers.
The held that within the European Union, where users’ privacy benefits from a high level of protection ensured the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive – the ATT framework adds an additional layer that fails to meet the requirements for a valid consent under EU law. As such, according to the Authority, it results in unnecessary, disproportionate and unjustified complexity.
Furthermore, the ATT prompt was allegedly imposed in a discretionary, unilateral and non-transparent manner by Apple onto publishers developing apps for its App Store. The Authority therefore considered that the design and implementation of the ATT prompt created excessive and unnecessary constraints, which, in any case, do not provide better protection for European users, contrary to Apple's claims. As noted by the Authority and the privacy regulator, the ATT has proven to be an artificially complex mechanism, that specifically penalizes app publishers within the iOS environment and their ad-tech partners.
The €150 million fine imposed by the Authority covers an infringement period of approximately 2 years in accordance with the rules for calculating penalties and is not intended to indemnify the individual damage suffered by the victims. Victims may seek compensation for the anticompetitive harm suffered within a five-year limitation period from the date the decision becomes final.
Apple announced on its website that it had appealed the Authority’s decision.
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About HBSS France
HBSS France is a Paris-based group affiliated with the world-renowned American law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP. The Paris-based team is comprised of lawyers with expertise in competition and European regulations, deeply committed to defending media, technology companies, and agencies in their dealings with major digital platforms. The team, led by Fayrouze Masmi-Dazi, leverages its expertise, creative vision, and unconventional approach to law to effectively combat practices that are most detrimental to the economy, particularly the digital economy, and society in general (disinformation, regulatory asymmetries that harm the economy of cultural creation), and to foster competition through innovation and merit.
Contact
Fayrouze Masmi-Dazi
fayrouzemd@hbssfrance.com