Taking on Apple’s unfair practices - How Hausfeld turned a standalone collective action into a landmark victory
When Dr Rachael Kent instructed Hausfeld in 2021, she was willing to take on Apple, one of the most recognised global brands. Her claim sought redress for approximately 36 million UK consumers and businesses who she alleged had paid inflated prices through Apple's UK App Store, with aggregate losses estimated at £1.5 billion. With her emphatic win in 2025 following a hard-fought trial, she became the first Class Representative of the UK’s nascent collective proceedings regime to succeed against a global technology giant, and her claim that Apple had abused its dominance by charging unfair prices and creating a distorted app store market was vindicated.
Challenges
As this was a standalone action - i.e., it was brought by Dr Kent without the benefit of a regulatory decision on which she could rely - Dr Kent and Hausfeld had to prove every element of her claim, including infringement, causation and loss.
The imbalances between the parties made that challenge even greater. On one side was a private individual, an outsider to Apple, representing millions of UK class members and dependent on third-party funding that was open to scrutiny and review by the Court and Apple, at all times. On the other side stood Apple, one of the world's largest and best-resourced companies, sparing no cost defending its long-standing and highly profitable practices, and who also held almost the entirety of the evidential record.
Our task was to turn that imbalance into a case capable of succeeding at trial.
Build a case capable of matching Apple
This case required years of hard work of exceptional quality. It required Hausfeld to maintain and manage the financial backing required to sustain years of litigation; obtain and master an enormous evidential record; assemble leading counsel and experts across over five disciplines and keep the proceedings moving towards trial, notwithstanding multiple procedural challenges and uncertainties that could not be anticipated when litigating in a novel regime.
The scale of this task quickly became apparent. Over approximately four years, the team guided Dr Kent through the review of over a million disclosure documents, 18 expert and reply reports and nine heavily contested pre-trial hearings. Those hearings included an attempt to strike out half the claim, disputes over disclosure and an application that threatened significantly to delay the trial.
Eventually, the proceedings culminated in an eight-week trial involving 15 witnesses, expert “hot-tubbing”, novel questions of law and the crème de la crème of pre-eminent competition law barristers battling it out for both sides.
Innovation and calculated risk
Hausfeld undertook extensive investigative work at its own risk to validate the claim before Dr Kent began proceedings. This included advising on the complex negotiation of a market-leading funding and insurance arrangement for Dr Kent, ultimately giving the claim the financial resilience needed to confront Apple over several years.
Hausfeld then constructed this complex legal case from the ground up. This included creating a deep understanding of Apple’s business, so that the team could apply an excessive-pricing analysis to the profitability of the App Store, and fortifying the claim against Apple's attempts to use the “refusal to supply” doctrine to protect its app ecosystem from the competition arguments being advanced against it.
For the courtroom, Hausfeld assembled a leading team of competition counsel and specialist economists alongside experts in forensic accounting, app development, app security and payment systems.
Behind the public facing work on the case sat an equally demanding operational challenge. The team managed the case within the bounds of the litigation funding, coordinated Dr Kent's consultative group, oversaw claims administrators, handled Apple's disclosure with eDisclosure platforms, maintained the claim website, and worked with PR advisers to keep class members informed of developments in the case.
Significance beyond immediate victory
On 23 October 2025, the Competition Appeal Tribunal delivered its judgment. Dr Kent succeeded on every aspect of her claim. Apple had abused its dominant position by charging unfair prices on the App Store, and excluded rivals from offering their products to UK consumers.
It was the first successful judgment following trial for a claimant in collective proceedings in the UK. It established many critical legal precedents for the nascent collectives regime and for the future application of UK competition law to Big Tech. The case also has the potential to set records for both the size of the class being compensated and the damages ultimately awarded.
What is more, the judgment established that private enforcement in the UK against competition harms caused by Big Tech is not just possible, but achievable. This at a time when regulators’ fines are ultimately swallowed by major technology companies as part of doing business and those who ultimately suffer from illegal conduct – in this case UK consumers and businesses – would otherwise go uncompensated.
Apple has subsequently been refused permission by the CAT to appeal the judgment but has sought permission to appeal from the Court of Appeal directly.
Earlier in the proceedings, when Apple challenged the enforceability of Dr Kent's funding arrangements, the Court of Appeal dismissed its appeal because of Hausfeld’s work in response. An adverse decision would likely have affected the availability of funding for competition claims across the UK market.
In recognition of the impact of this case on the legal landscape, the Lawyer Awards 2026 presented the coveted “Litigation Team of the Year” award to the Kent v Apple team.
Conclusion
Hausfeld achieved unprecedented success in this complex competition case, demonstrating that the UK's relatively young collective actions regime can provide real outcomes for UK consumers and businesses and can establish a practical route for the redress of harms that may be individually limited in value, but collectively enormous.
What began as an individual class representative confronting one of the world's richest companies about a long-standing practice became something much larger.
It evidenced that the right claims being brought using the UK collective proceedings regime can overcome an extraordinary imbalance of resources, give millions of people a viable route to redress, and ultimately hold wrong-doers to account. Ultimately, Kent v Apple is the epitome of what the UK's collective competition regime was set up to achieve.
