
Apple on Wednesday failed to influence a US appeals court docket to pause key components of a federal decide’s order requiring the iPhone maker to instantly open its profitable App Retailer to extra competitors.
The ninth US Circuit Court docket of Appeals rejected Apple’s request to place the provisions on maintain because the tech firm appeals the decide’s order, which got here in a long-running antitrust lawsuit introduced by Fortnite maker Epic Games.
US District Choose Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in April discovered Apple in contempt of an earlier injunction order she issued within the Epic Video games case.
Apple in an announcement mentioned it was “dissatisfied with the choice to not keep the district court docket’s order, and we’ll proceed to argue our case through the appeals course of.”
The decide on April 30 ordered Apple to finish a number of practices that she mentioned have been designed to bypass the injunction, together with a brand new 27 % payment Apple imposed on app builders when its prospects full an app buy exterior the App Retailer.
The court docket additionally prohibited Apple from limiting the place builders place hyperlinks to make purchases exterior of an app.
Epic Video games founder and chief government Tim Sweeney mentioned in a submit on X after the appeals court docket ruling that the “lengthy nationwide nightmare of the Apple tax is ended.”
In its emergency attraction, Apple mentioned the ruling blocked the corporate from “exercising management over core features of its enterprise operations” and compelled it to provide free entry to its providers.
Epic Video games countered that Apple was making an attempt to proceed evading competitors and accumulating charges that the decide had barred.
Apple has confronted a “surge of real competitors” since Gonzalez Rogers issued her April injunction, as builders up to date apps with “higher fee strategies, higher offers, and higher client alternative,” Epic mentioned.
Epic Video games sued Apple in 2020 to loosen its management over transactions in purposes that use its iOS working system and the way apps are distributed to shoppers.
Apple principally received the case, however Gonzalez Rogers in 2021 mentioned Apple should enable builders to extra simply steer shoppers to doubtlessly cheaper non-Apple fee choices.
Apple defied that court docket order to keep up a income stream price billions of {dollars}, Gonzalez Rogers wrote in April.
She additionally mentioned Apple had misled the court docket about its efforts to conform along with her injunction and referred the corporate and one among its executives to federal prosecutors for a doable felony contempt investigation.
© Thomson Reuters 2025
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