Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST—9th Cir.: Unlockd Media’s Google monopolization suit rejected for lack of antitrust injury, (Aug 3, 2026)

By Martin A. Steinberg, J.D.

Google allegedly drove Unlockd out of business by removing its apps and terminating AdMob access.

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal with prejudice of Unlockd Media Inc. Liquidation Trust’s attempted-monopolization claim against Google. Unlockd alleged that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by removing its apps from the Google Play Store and terminating its access to Google AdMob, causing Unlockd to lose revenue and ultimately go bankrupt. The court held, however, that Unlockd alleged only injury to itself, not injury to competition in the broader digital-advertising market. Its allegations of reduced supply, higher prices, and diminished consumer choice were conclusory and unsupported by facts regarding market share, remaining competitors, or measurable effects on price or output. The court also rejected Unlockd’s reliance on allegations from the Justice Department’s separate ad-tech case against Google because those allegations concerned different markets and lacked a causal connection to Unlockd’s exclusion. Accordingly, the court concluded that Unlockd had not pleaded the type of antitrust injury the Sherman Act was intended to prevent (Unlockd Media, Inc. v. Google LLC, No. 25-1869 (9th Cir. Jul. 31, 2026)).

Background. Unlockd, which characterized itself as both a customer and competitor of Google in the digital-advertising market, developed a smartphone application that displayed full-screen mobile advertisements or content when users unlocked their Android phones. In June 2018, Google removed Unlockd from the Google Play Store for allegedly violating its “Incentivized Traffic” policy. Unlockd alleged that the removal caused the company to fail and ultimately enter bankruptcy.

Unlockd filed suit in September 2021, alleging that Google removed Unlockd from the Play Store because it viewed the company as a competitive threat in digital advertising. The trust also alleged that Google had invested in Glance, a startup offering similar technology. It asserted a single claim for attempted monopolization under Section 2 of the Sherman Act and defined the relevant “Digital Advertising Market” as the market in which personalized advertising is delivered over the internet to consumers using computers and other digital devices, excluding classified advertising.

The district court initially dismissed the trust’s first amended complaint for failure to plead antitrust standing and for relying on conclusory allegations. The court explained that injury to an individual company, standing alone, does not establish antitrust injury. Google then moved to dismiss the second amended complaint on the same ground, arguing that the trust still had not adequately alleged antitrust standing. The court subsequently dismissed the second amended complaint solely because the trust failed to plead antitrust injury.

Lack of antitrust injury. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal with prejudice of Unlockd Media Inc. Liquidation Trust’s second amended complaint, which alleged that Google attempted to monopolize the digital-advertising market in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act. Unlockd claimed that Google removed its apps from the Google Play Store and terminated its access to Google AdMob for purported violations of Google’s platform policies, causing Unlockd to lose revenue, cease operations, and enter bankruptcy. The court concluded, however, that the complaint failed to allege antitrust injury because it described harm to Unlockd itself without plausibly alleging harm to competition in the relevant market.

Injury to competitive process. The court explained that antitrust injury requires an injury to the competitive process beyond the effect on an individual plaintiff. Unlockd’s specific factual allegations concerned only its own exclusion from Google’s platforms and the resulting financial consequences. By contrast, its allegations of market-wide harm were conclusory. Unlockd asserted that its removal deprived advertisers, publishers, and consumers of an alternative form of digital advertising and reduced the total supply of digital-advertising inventory. The court held that the elimination of a single competitor, without more, does not establish harm to competition. Even assuming Google treated Unlockd unfairly, the Sherman Act protects competition rather than individual competitors.

Single competitor’s injury. The breadth of Unlockd’s proposed market further undermined the inference that its exclusion harmed competition. A single competitor’s injury may sometimes coincide with injury to competition when the market is narrow, discrete, and populated by only a few participants. Unlockd, however, alleged a broad market for the sale of digital-advertising inventory extending throughout the United States and potentially five other countries. It also acknowledged that the market contained numerous participants and that products similar to Unlockd’s continued to operate through the Play Store and AdMob after Unlockd’s removal. In that context, the court found it economically implausible that the removal of one nascent startup materially affected market-wide prices or output.

No market-wide effect. The complaint also lacked factual allegations supporting such an inference. Unlockd did not allege its market share before its removal, the number or scale of the competitors that remained, or any measurable effect on price, output, or consumer choice. Although Unlockd alleged that digital-advertising prices increased between 2018 and 2022, it provided no basic information about the underlying data, including the geographic area covered or the types of digital advertising measured. Unlockd also attributed the alleged price increases partly to Google’s other anticompetitive conduct, rather than solely to Unlockd’s removal. The court observed that rising prices could instead have resulted from increased demand or other unrelated market conditions. Because the complaint did not plead facts making Unlockd’s anticompetitive explanation plausible rather than merely possible, the price allegations did not establish antitrust injury.

PLS.com distinguished. The court distinguished PLS.com, LLC v. National Association of Realtors, 32 F.4th 824 (9th Cir. 2022), on which Unlockd relied. In that case, an entrenched and dominant defendant operating in a discrete market adopted a policy expressly designed to prevent new entry, producing concrete market-wide effects on price, quality, and consumer choice. Unlockd’s complaint did not similarly allege entrenched dominance within a narrow market or identify a comparable rule or practice designed to foreclose market entry.

DOJ action. Unlockd also could not establish antitrust injury by relying on allegations incorporated from the Justice Department’s complaint in United States v. Google LLC, No. 1:23-cv-00108 (E.D. Va.). The DOJ action concerned three ad-technology infrastructure markets: publisher ad servers, ad exchanges, and advertiser ad networks. Unlockd, by contrast, alleged a market for the sale of digital-advertising inventory. Because a plaintiff generally must suffer its injury in the market in which competition is allegedly restrained, the allegations concerning Google’s conduct in the DOJ’s markets did not establish antitrust injury in Unlockd’s proposed market.

The court further rejected Unlockd’s reliance on Ellis v. Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement & Power District, 24 F.4th 1262 (9th Cir. 2022). Unlockd interpreted Ellis as recognizing antitrust standing whenever a competitor is directly and economically harmed by anticompetitive conduct. The court explained that Ellis did not establish such a rule. There, a utility customer directly paid higher prices under the challenged pricing scheme, and those increased prices were the means by which the defendant allegedly sought to suppress competition from solar energy. The customer’s injury was therefore “inextricably intertwined” with the alleged harm to the competitive market.

Competitor vs. consumer. Neither aspect of Ellis applied to Unlockd. Unlockd did not allege that it was a customer charged inflated prices under the challenged conduct; it alleged that it was a competitor denied access to Google’s platforms. Nor did Unlockd explain how its exclusion was the instrument of a broader scheme to suppress market-wide competition. Although Unlockd’s briefing could have been read as suggesting that it was also a consumer of Google’s ad-technology services, it did not adequately develop that argument and therefore forfeited it. In any event, the court emphasized that the relevant distinction was not simply between consumers and competitors, but between isolated harm to a plaintiff and injury connected to the suppression of competition throughout the market. Even if Unlockd could be treated as a consumer of Google’s ad-technology inputs, its allegations still established only its own exclusion.

“Inextricably intertwined.” The “inextricably intertwined” doctrine also could not cure Unlockd’s failure to allege harm to competition. Even assuming some overlap between the DOJ’s ad-tech markets and Unlockd’s proposed market, Unlockd did not plausibly connect the conduct challenged by the DOJ to its exclusion from AdMob and the Play Store. The DOJ complaint concerned Google’s self-favoring among its ad-tech products for web publishers, its acquisition of DoubleClick, and its manipulation of bidding protocols. Those practices bore no apparent connection to Google’s enforcement of its AdMob and Play Store policies against Unlockd. The court therefore concluded that the alleged markets, challenged conduct, and causal chains were different.

The court ultimately concluded that Unlockd’s alleged injury was not the type of injury the antitrust laws were intended to prevent. Because the second amended complaint alleged harm to Unlockd but did not plausibly allege injury to competition in the relevant market, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal with prejudice.

The Case is No. 25-1869.

Judge: VanDyke, L.

Attorneys: Justin Strother (Diamond McCarthy, LLP) for Unlockd Media, Inc. Ashley Corkery (Cooley, LLP) for Google LLC.

Companies: Unlockd Media, Inc.; Google LLC

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