Apple has requested a federal appeals courtroom to briefly pause key provisions in a US decide’s ruling that ordered the tech firm to instantly open its profitable App Retailer to extra competitors.
Apple informed the San Francisco-based ninth US Circuit Courtroom of Appeals in a submitting on Wednesday that it will likely be irreparably harmed if the April 30 order shouldn’t be placed on maintain whereas the iPhone maker’s authorized problem is pending.
Apple is combating a ruling that discovered the corporate in contempt of an earlier order in a 2020 antitrust lawsuit introduced by Epic Games, maker of the web online game Fortnite.
In its submitting, Apple mentioned the brand new ruling blocks the corporate from “exercising management over core elements of its enterprise operations.”
US District Choose Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered Apple to finish a number of practices that she mentioned have been designed to bypass the injunction. Apple’s submitting centered on two of them, together with the courtroom’s ban on a brand new 27 p.c charge Apple imposed on app builders when its clients full an app buy outdoors the App Retailer.
Apple in its submitting mentioned a federal courtroom cannot “pressure Apple to completely give away free entry to its services and products.”
Apple can be difficult a part of the decide’s order that bars the corporate from limiting the place builders place hyperlinks to make purchases outdoors of an app.
Epic Video games in an announcement known as Apple’s bid to remain the trial decide’s order a “final ditch effort to dam competitors and extract large junk charges on the expense of shoppers and builders.”
Apple has confronted a “surge of real competitors” because the injunction issued final week, as builders up to date apps with “higher cost strategies, higher offers, and higher client alternative,” Epic mentioned.
Within the underlying lawsuit, Epic Video games sued Apple to loosen its management over transactions in functions that use its iOS working system and the way apps are distributed to shoppers.
The Cupertino, California-based firm willfully didn’t adjust to a 2021 injunction within the case designed to permit builders to extra simply steer shoppers to probably cheaper non-Apple cost choices, Gonzalez Rogers mentioned in her choice.
“Apple sought to take care of a income stream value billions in direct defiance of this courtroom’s injunction,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote.
Gonzalez Rogers mentioned Apple had misled the courtroom about its efforts to conform together with her injunction and referred the corporate and certainly one of its executives to federal prosecutors for a attainable legal contempt investigation.
© Thomson Reuters 2025
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