Apple is facing a £2 billion ($2.7 billion) London lawsuit brought on behalf of British businesses. The lawsuit, filed at London's Competition Appeal Tribunal on Thursday, follows years of regulatory scrutiny over Apple's app tracking transparency rules.
Apple has said it introduced that feature to allow users to control whether to grant apps permission to track their activity across other companies' apps and websites. Lawyers bringing the new lawsuit against Apple, though, say the feature imposed stricter requirements on third-party developers.
"This action is important to protect the rights of British businesses that depend on Apple, to ensure that the rules that Apple applies are fair, and to compensate the losses that British companies have suffered," lawyer Sean Pope said in a statement. Apple defended its practices, stating its priority is user privacy.
Previously, the German competition authority had accused Apple of abusing its market power, after complaints from Facebook-owner Meta plus various publishers and advertisers. Regulators in France, Italy, Poland and elsewhere have also probed the tech giant's policies.