Boy howdy, you know Apple's in the big leagues now; sure, they may not be getting nailed on antitrust issues here in the U.S., but overseas and across the border it's another matter. Recently it came to light that the Japanese FTC raided the offices of Apple Japan, searching for evidence that the company was withholding merchandise from resellers who refused to comply with Apple's minimum pricing policy. And now it appears that Apple Canada faces an antitrust lawsuit in the Great White North, brought against them by a former Apple dealer alleging monopolistic business tactics. Sure, it's a far cry from a high-profile Justice Department-and-19-states "Redmond Justice" situation, but it's a start, right?

According to ehMac, Computer Buyer's Warehouse Direct claims that after Apple had initially approved the CBWD 100-page catalog, they then rescinded their approval and barred the company from "advertising pricing for any Apple products within the catalog or from shipping Apple systems outside an approximate 200 km radius of their Markham, Ontario location." Then Apple Canada allegedly set up an "out-of-territory sale" on purpose, and when the sale was completed, they used that as a reason to terminate CBWD's authorized reseller status. Holy entrapment, Batman, eh? The antitrust stuff comes into play because CBWD's elimination leaves Canadians with only one catalog source for Macs: MacWarehouse.

Valid complaint or frivolous grudge-suit? You be the judge... but, of course, your opinion doesn't count for squat. It'll be interesting to see what a real judge's take on the situation is, and whether CBWD will get the $5 million Canadian they're going after. Meanwhile, why do you suppose Apple Canada seems so keen on keeping MacWarehouse as the only Canadian Mac catalog reseller? We don't know anything about CBWD, so we're not going to speculate on whether or not they're up to snuff, but as long as it's not a Best Buy type of thing going on, we figure the more ways for people to buy Macs, the better.