Apple Inc. will be back in court again, but this time Samsung is not on the other side. Instead, it's customers who bought iPods between 2006 to 2009, who are asking for $350 million in damages.

The plaintiffs claim that due to Apple's FairPlay DRM system, the iPod and iTunes gained unfair advantage over rival services and MP3 players. This made it extremely hard for consumers to get out of the iTunes ecosystem, without losing a lot of content and money. 

Like Us on Facebook

Apple's DRM system also updated iTunes every few months, to make sure customers weren't downloading music from rival services like Real Networks. Real worked on a feature called Harmony to make their music compatible with iPods, but Apple quickly patched this feature.

The trial has been going on for a few days, after US District Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers gave the greenlight last week. Apple claims Real Networks only had a 3 percent share of the music market back in 2006, and Apple did not dictate prices based on Real's service, nor did it remove the features to hurt customers.

This is not the first time Apple has been in court due to DRM. In 2010, US District Judge James Ware claimed there was nothing illegal about installing software that was incompatible with the competition. We will see if the same holds true in 2014.  

DRM is a tough issue and most of the time the corporation wins. Even with DRM becoming a less obstructive method to keep users in-check, people still find not being able to move their folders and files around on different platforms to be against the law.

It will be hard for the small team to win against Apple's massive legal group. Even if the judge does grant a guilty verdict on Apple, we expect it to be a few years before Apple pays a dime to the people who are fighting.

TagsiPod, iTunes, DRM, Real Networks