The long-running legal battle between Epic Games and Apple over Fortnite continues, and may go all the way to the United States Supreme Court if Apple gets its way.
The lawsuit is rooted in a dispute between the two entities over Apple’s App Store payment policies, which at the time disallowed redirects away from the store (Apple takes a 30% cut of all sales on its App Store).
When Epic Games circumvented the stipulation with an in-game payment option in its massively popular online game Fortnite, Apple shortly thereafter cut Epic Games’ developer accounts, removing its products from iOS.
Epic Games filed a lawsuit in 2020. The numerous court rulings since have mostly been in Apple’s favor. We reported back in April that the The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Apple’s App Store policies do not violate federal antitrust laws, upholding a lower court ruling from 2021. However, it also found that “Apple’s
anti-steering provisions are “unfair” under California’s Unfair Competition Law,” according to the petition document.
As reported by Reuters, the same court rejected an appeal from Apple (in the hopes of reversing that latter point) last week to revisit its decision. The official statement from Apple’s attorneys in Monday’s filing to the Supreme Court:
The district court issued a sweeping injunction prohibiting Apple from enforcing its anti-steering rules against all developers of iOS apps offered for distribution in the United States, even though the sole named plaintiff (Epic Games, Inc.) did not seek or obtain class certification, and did not prove that an injunction running in favor of non-parties was necessary to make it whole.”
Stay tuned for more on this story as it develops.
Via Apple Insider.
Featured image via Macworld.
