Apple Prevails at $1 Billion Trial Over Digital Music

Apple Inc. quickly dispensed with a $1 billion lawsuit by iPod users claiming software updates for the device were meant to block competitors, as a jury ruled for the company after only three hours of deliberations.

Changes to the player’s iTunes software were genuine improvements, jurors in Oakland, California said today, rather than attempts to prevent music sold by rival companies from working on the iPod. The verdict in the 2005 case came after a two-week trial in federal court that featured Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’s e-mails and videotaped testimony he gave six months before he died of cancer, in 2011.