Apple, writing in a motion to dismiss the Justice Department’s case against it filed earlier this year:

And the Government’s theory that Apple has somehow violated the antitrust laws by not giving third parties broader access to iPhone runs headlong into blackletter antitrust law protecting a firm’s right to design and control its own product…

As a matter of law, Apple is not required to grant third parties more access—or to build altogether new technology for their use—on the less-secure, less-private terms certain developers prefer.

Apple’s motion to dismiss, which is unlikely to succeed, is 49 pages long, and I read it all. Most of it is filled with legal jargon, and I don’t recommend anyone read it, but the company’s legal department lays out four key points:

  • It is not “exclusionary conduct” to dictate the business terms of a relationship between a private company and a third-party developer interested in doing business with said private company.

  • The government is unable to show harm caused by Apple’s actions.

  • The government fails to show Apple has a monopoly, which is core to the entire case.

  • The government brought this case via a series of lies and falsehoods.

All four points are spot on. Apple, of course, provides ample legal evidence to support these claims, relying on older cases and interpretations of the law to support the points — one of the sections is titled “Apple Is Not Microsoft” — but just the basic rebuttal alone should be enough for this nonsense to be thrown out in any functioning judicial system. The entire case, first of all, relies on a nonsensical definition of Apple’s market — “premium smartphones” — and the Justice Department failed to prove Apple was a monopoly even by that definition. Regardless, the Justice Department only has a right to sue under the Sherman Antitrust Act if a company has a monopoly market share in the sector it operates, so in Apple’s case, the market would be all smartphones, not just premium ones. If the Justice Department gets to label a market however it pleases, technically every company is a monopolist.

On top of that, the Justice Department flat-out lied multiple times in its brief when it filed the lawsuit in March. That should also be enough to invalidate the whole lawsuit because the whole thing rests on a throne of lies, and as soon as those lies are disproven, the case becomes enormously weak. It’s like if someone was accused of murder, but the person they’re said to have killed is still alive and well. While, yes, the department did correctly state some claims, especially regarding the Apple Watch’s exclusivity, the parts about super apps and messaging are just wrong. Apple doesn’t prevent cross-platform messaging — WhatsApp and many other apps are available on the App Store. The Justice Department completely ignores that fact and conveniently doesn’t even include it in its brief. It reads like something Samsung would write on a cheesy billboard advertisement.

For all the government claimed, it failed to prove in its suit that consumers were harmed by Apple’s actions. All it wrote was that Apple is a successful enterprise and that other companies aren’t as successful because consumers like Apple products better because they’re more locked down. That’s not illegal; being popular isn’t unlawful. Thus, there isn’t a reason for the Justice Department to file the lawsuit under the Sherman Antitrust Act because there’s no proof of harm anywhere in it. It wasn’t able to prove Apple committed illegal acts with the non-fabricated evidence it provided, and the rest is just deceptive nonsense.

Finally, I find it rather humorous that Apple had to explain the concept of capitalism to the U.S. government, which regulates the richest and most notorious capitalist economy in the world. “Apple is not required to grant third parties… access.” That one sentence fragment from the introduction should be enough to throw the whole case out. The United States is suing Apple for writing a contract and telling non-interested developers to take it or leave it. Writing contracts isn’t illegal, even if a company is a monopoly. (Apple, again, isn’t.) There’s a certain amount of irony in this case, and I’m glad Apple is forcefully responding to it.

(Also, I love how even the legal department writes “iPhone” without an article as if it’s a proper noun. Never change, Apple.)