The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) has joined an amicus brief led by the Chamber of Progress, requesting the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to uphold a district court decision in favor of Apple. The case, AliveCor v. Apple, involves allegations from AliveCor that Apple acted anti-competitively by replacing an application program interface (API) with an improved version.

The district court dismissed AliveCor's claims, stating that Apple's actions were aligned with the innovation encouraged by antitrust laws. According to the court, companies are "permitted and indeed encouraged to compete aggressively on the merits." The Ninth Circuit has previously stated that if a "design change is an improvement, it is 'necessarily tolerated by the antitrust laws,'" unless there is abuse of "monopoly power in some other way."

CCIA has been advocating for competition in the tech industry for over five decades. CCIA Vice President for Global Competition and Regulatory Policy Krisztian Katona expressed support for Apple's actions: “The district court recognized that Apple’s efforts to improve its wearable technology are precisely the type of innovation that the antitrust laws promote."

Katona further emphasized the importance of maintaining these principles for a competitive wearables market and continued innovation across technology sectors: “A competitive wearables market depends on upholding these foundational principles, as does continued robust innovation across technology sectors, so in our amicus brief we urged the Court to affirm these important principles.”