Book

Description

When your iPhone screen cracks, you expect a repair. What you get instead is Face ID disabled, battery health unmonitorable, and a persistent warning flashing on your lock screen. All of this because Apple's software won't authorize the part, even though it's genuine hardware and the technician is competent. For millions across the EU, this isn't theoretical. It's the reality of Apple's repair ecosystem. This book examines whether Apple's parts-pairing, serialization, and authorization controls constitute technical tying and abuse of dominance under Article 102 TFEU. Through rigorous doctrinal analysis and technical investigation, it demonstrates how design choices can function as foreclosure mechanisms, systematically excluding independent repairers from restoring full device functionality. The argument moves beyond formal legal categories to interrogate whether innovation claims genuinely serve security, or whether they're cover for competitive exclusion. At the intersection of competition law, consumer protection, and sustainability policy, this analysis offers a critical framework for assessing how dominant firms weaponize technology against aftermarket competition. As the EU pursues its digital governance agenda through the DMA, Right to Repair Directive, and ecodesign regulations, this book's findings about necessity, proportionality, and less restrictive alternatives become essential reading for policymakers, competition lawyers, and anyone concerned with what it means to actually own the devices in your pocket.