Tuna Cetin
Tech giant Apple on Monday filed a new appeal in its case against Fortnite-maker Epic, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review its arguments and overturn the decision of the 9th Circuit, as reported by Reuters.
The legal battle between the duo first began in 2020 when Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store after Epic Games introduced a new update that enabled it to bypass the controversial 30% in-app purchase cut. Following the removal, the video game company sued the iPhone-maker, accusing it of using its monopoly and being anti-competitive.
In 2021, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the US District Court ruled that Epic knowingly breached the App Store guidelines, and didn’t require Apple to reinstate Fortnite on its app marketplace.
Rogers also ruled that Apple didn’t exhibit monopolistic behaviour but that it must enable app developers to offer alternative payment methods to their users. The change went into effect in 2022, and this April, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the decision.
In Apple’s new filing, the company lawyers argued that the decision of issuing a nationwide injunction goes beyond Epic and “exceeds the district court’s authority under Article III, which limits federal court jurisdiction to actual cases and controversies’’. They said that the company will raise “far-reaching and important” questions regarding the power of judges to issue extensive injunctions.
While such a ruling would impact Apple’s U.S. operations only, the company is also reportedly getting ready to allow European users to sideload apps and provide them with access to alternative app stores in order to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which may enable Fortnite’s return to the App Store.
Retweeting Reuters’ report, Epic CEO Tom Sweeney said that Apple’s policy ”censors developers who want to tell consumers about better deals on digital goods out-of-app.”
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