Ann Pope, a former senior official at Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority, has filed a £2 billion ($2.7 billion) lawsuit against Apple at London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal on behalf of app developers harmed by App Tracking Transparency rules. The case represents the third major UK antitrust challenge to Apple’s ATT policy and marks the first time a former regulator has led such a claim, lending the lawsuit unusual institutional credibility.
As reported by Reuters, Pope’s previous role at the CMA, the very authority that has pursued Apple on this issue, signals insider knowledge of antitrust enforcement strategy and potential weaknesses in Apple’s position. In a statement, Pope said Apple’s policy “resulted in very significant harm to businesses that depend on Apple as a gatekeeper,” adding that the action aims to “protect the rights of British businesses that depend on Apple, to ensure that the rules that Apple applies are fair, and to compensate the losses that British companies have suffered.” The lawsuit does not yet proceed to trial; it must first be certified by the tribunal before it can advance.
Apple’s own apps are not required to request App Tracking Transparency permission before collecting user data for personalization, while third-party developers face mandatory ATT prompts. Apple has argued consistently that this distinction is consistent because its apps do not collect the data requiring an ATT prompt, and third-party apps not collecting such data are also exempt from the requirement. The company has not yet commented on the new filing.
Pope’s lawsuit arrives as Apple faces mounting ATT-related challenges across Europe. In August 2026, Apple concluded a three-year antitrust investigation by Germany’s Federal Cartel Office by agreeing to make eight changes to its ATT implementation. The settlement requires Apple to remove “possibly discouraging symbols and wording” from consent prompts and align the design of permission requests for Apple’s own services much more closely with those shown for third-party apps, a concession that mirrors the central complaint in the UK case.
The UK tribunal has already ruled against Apple once on App Store matters, ordering the company to pay approximately £1.5 billion over App Store commissions last October, a decision Apple is currently appealing. A second UK antitrust case against Apple over ATT remains ongoing, making Pope’s filing the third active challenge in British courts alone.
Pope’s lawsuit seeks compensation for developers across multiple sectors, advertising networks, analytics platforms, mobile game studios, and data brokers, whose business models relied on cross-app tracking for user profiling and targeted advertising. The certification phase will determine whether the tribunal believes Pope has sufficient grounds to proceed as a class action, which could expand the claim to include hundreds or thousands of affected businesses. If certified, the case could force Apple to reconsider how ATT operates at its most basic level, particularly following the company’s German settlement concessions.
