How is Apple's app store requirement not straight-forward tying under the plain language of 15USC§14?
The language there is:
"It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, to lease or make a sale or contract for sale of goods, wares, merchandise, machinery, supplies, or other commodities, whether patented or unpatented, for use, consumption, or resale within the United States or any Territory thereof or the District of Columbia or any insular possession or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States, or fix a price charged therefor, or discount from, or rebate upon, such price, on the condition, agreement, or understanding that the lessee or purchaser thereof shall not use or deal in the goods, wares, merchandise, machinery, supplies, or other commodities of a competitor or competitors of the lessor or seller, where the effect of such lease, sale, or contract for sale or such condition, agreement, or understanding may be to substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce".
All the requirements under the plain language are there:
1) Apple is selling a commodity, access to the Apple App Store, to providers.
2) The commodity is used within the United States.
3) The sale will be on the condition or understanding that the app manufacturer does not purchase payment processing for the iPhone application from any competitors of Apple.
4) The condition may substantially lesson competition in a line of commerce, namely payment processing for iPhone applications, because most iPhone developers will be unable to use one of Apple's competitors.
It seems that Apple's behaviour is exactly what the Clayton Act anticipated and prohibited.
This applies to anything if you define your market tightly enough and "payment processing for iPhone applications" is about as tight a definition as you can get.
If you can define things that tightly how is it different to my going into a shop (for the sake of argument let's make it a shop which sells goods the owner makes and therefore can't be bought elsewhere) which only accepts cash and claiming that they're anti-competitive because they don't accept alternate payment mechanisms?
Unless the iPhone obtained a dominant position in the smartphone market choice exists - you can go elsewhere, as can developers and you can buy (and they can sell) apps from other places and pay or bill in other ways.
That's the market working and that's why anti-trust laws are unlikely to apply under the current circumstances - they're designed to ensure competition and smartphones is a market as competitive as pretty much any on the planet right now.
Except that "payment processing for iPhone applications" is a very artificial category. It seems the language would be more appropriate for a situation where, say, Apple was financially discouraging developers from porting their apps to Android; in this case, they're forcing developers to accept less money on their platform, which, if anything, encourages the competition.
Apple was financially discouraging developers from porting their apps to Android
This is an interesting statement because if you remove the word 'financially,' they have done that by disallowing development with cross-platform tools.
I'm sure somebody will try to sue, but I actually think that it opens a big hole for someone like Google to gain an edge. It's even possible that Google could put out a device that has far more content available than would be available on the i* because content providers won't want to play with Apple any more.
The language there is: "It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, to lease or make a sale or contract for sale of goods, wares, merchandise, machinery, supplies, or other commodities, whether patented or unpatented, for use, consumption, or resale within the United States or any Territory thereof or the District of Columbia or any insular possession or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States, or fix a price charged therefor, or discount from, or rebate upon, such price, on the condition, agreement, or understanding that the lessee or purchaser thereof shall not use or deal in the goods, wares, merchandise, machinery, supplies, or other commodities of a competitor or competitors of the lessor or seller, where the effect of such lease, sale, or contract for sale or such condition, agreement, or understanding may be to substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce".
All the requirements under the plain language are there: 1) Apple is selling a commodity, access to the Apple App Store, to providers. 2) The commodity is used within the United States. 3) The sale will be on the condition or understanding that the app manufacturer does not purchase payment processing for the iPhone application from any competitors of Apple. 4) The condition may substantially lesson competition in a line of commerce, namely payment processing for iPhone applications, because most iPhone developers will be unable to use one of Apple's competitors.
It seems that Apple's behaviour is exactly what the Clayton Act anticipated and prohibited.