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eHomeUpgrade reports that Judge James Ware, of the District Court of Northern California rejected Apple's argument that the two products are not tied together - you can for example buy and play music from iTunes without owning an iPod

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- and found that plaintiff Thomas Slattery had 'met all the requirements for asserting the tying claim'.

Tying two products together is (potentially) illegal under the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act and is described as 'the practice of making the sale of one good (the tying good) to the de facto or de jure customer conditional on the purchase of a second distinctive good (the tied good)'.

Slattery's lawsuit claims that Apple has an 80 per cent share of music downloads market and more than 90 per cent of the market for HDD-based portable music players.

'Apple has unlawfully bundled, tied, and/or leveraged its monopoly in the market for the sale of legal online digital music recordings to thwart competition in the separate market for portable hard drive digital music players, and vice-versa,' the suit alleges.