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Apple have been found not guilty of deleting competitor's music from iPods, as ruled by a jury.
The company will therefore not have to pay $350 million in fines, following accusations that updates and iPod models released between 2006 and 2009 were removing MP3's purchased elsewhere.
Apple's defence stated that the updates were a security measure and that the deletion of rival media, specifically RealNetworks (remember RealPlayer?) was accidental.
The jury agreed after the plaintiff's case began to fall apart. It was discovered they hadn't owned an iPod during the period in question and hadn't assessed the impact of the updates.
“There’s not one piece of evidence of a single individual who lost a single song, not even a complaint about it,” said Apple's lawyer William Isaacson.
“We created iPod and iTunes to give our customers the world’s best way to listen to music,” reads a statement from Apple. “Every time we’ve updated those products — and every Apple product over the years — we’ve done it to make the user experience even better.”
It may not be over however, as an appeal is due from the prosecution.
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