Is Apple Exercising Monopoly Power in Its Patent Actions in the US and Abroad?

This...

The ability to extract that additional money is not only a sign of monopoly power, it is also potentially a violation of consumer-related laws which preclude unfair competition.

...baffles me.

What's the basis for that logic? The same rates cover Apple. (Though, to be honest, I'm leaving it open that you're not as accurate as you could be in your assertions, especially given that you admit that in your first comment.)

Apple's not doing a very good job of abusing their "monopoly power" (which, by definition doesn't actually exist) if they're not negotiating deals that benefit their own products while hurting other products.

That's monopoly POWER.

You skipped the definition of a monopoly, which is what you need to establish to assert that Apple can exercise monopoly power:

The first prong is deciding whether a company even has a monopoly. A general definition of a monopoly is where nearly all of one product type or service is owned by one person or group of people within a community or area. Thereby, the sole control of this product or service is given to one party to the elimination of all others within the marketplace. Courts will usually look at a company’s market share for a particular product or service to see if a monopoly exists. If a company has a market share of greater than 75 percent, they will probably be considered a monopoly. For market share purposes, courts will make an apples-to-apples comparison by looking at identical products or products that are so similar they could be substituted to determine market share.

I'm not sure how you missed that.

Naturally, the first assumption is that Apple is correct with its patent claims. If so, it will have a monopoly assuming Google cannot avoid some of the patents.

Now you're just going off the deep end. You can just as easily "assume" that all the people suing Apple will be "correct" in their claims. You're now making a completely new argument: That apple MAY, in fact, SOMEDAY be a monopoly.

I suppose that's true. So might Samsung. Or Google.

However, monopoly power is something far different. And one can have an attempt to obtain a monopoly at a much lower market threshold.

What? Says who? What information can you provide that shows its possible to exert monopoly power without being a monopoly? I think you're confusing shrewd business tactics with monopoly power.

Central to monopolies, however, is not the market share but the ability to control prices.

No. That's wrong. I've now provided two definitions (one from a link you provided) and I'll quote it again:

Courts will usually look at a company’s market share for a particular product or service to see if a monopoly exists. If a company has a market share of greater than 75 percent, they will probably be considered a monopoly.

You go on:

One of the main reasons I said what I did in my first comment is that there are many other potential problems with how Apple operates

Fine. Present evidence to back up this assertion. I think what you'll do instead, is present your subjective opinion that this is the case, and it won't be a very detailed analysis of the overall market, but instead will be based on the one thing we all know, because you admitted it:

As many know, I am no fan of Apple products. They are not innovative, but instead work on design.

Of course, that's why Apple's products are so successful? Consumers are too stupid to choose better, more innovative products, instead we're all suckered in by fancy design?

Really? WMA? That's the argument you're pinning your hat on.

Whatever.

Its iPhone is nothing but a piece of design. Nothing is or was new, including the messy interface.

That's what I like to see, a completely subjective comment put forth as an objective argument. With that said, it's interesting that "nothing is or was new" yet what did phones look like before the iPhone became popular. What do they look like now? What did all these other companies say about the iPhone when it was released (most of them laughed and said such a device would never catch on) and where are they now?

They are not the most sued. They are the most arrogant and limited technology company in the world. They exist because their users consider themselves "with it." It is a cult, not a technology company.

Ah, that old argument. Apparently, millions and millions of people only use Apple because they're in a cult. I can see now that you weren't really looking for an answer to your question -- you were looking for a sucker to show up and provide an answer and a platform for your rambling.

The iTunes store actually sells its tracks in MPEG-4 AAC, not AC-3 (a Dolby technology). MP4 AAC was defined in 1997. CD's were commercially shipping in 1982. Does that make them an inferior format to any of the encoding technologies introduced since. There was a brief effort to push SACD's that provided higher quality audio. But, since they needed updated players to decode this and people generally thought that CD quality was already excellent, it failed.

Who cares when the format was designed or how many times Microsoft had to update theirs? The mainstream consumer cares about how to purchase music, get it onto their devices and play it. In that, Apple delivered the simplest end-to-end solution.

But I will note that Ars Technica and other publications chock full of Apple promoters (how many are paid by Apple?) have claimed that the Apple iPhone was better or had the first multitouch or other BS.

Dunno. You're the one making the dumb and baseless insinuation. You tell me. I'll not hold my breath.

The facts speak for themselves.

For such a lippy bunch, they sure don't seem to say what you want them to say.