Apple Loses Stay Motion in Epic Games Case
Apple (AAPL) has lost a bid to stay a key order in the case of Epic Games (pvt) vs. Apple that was made in September by Federal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. The stay would have prevented the implementation of the court ordered injunction, as noted below, which puts Apple in the position of no longer being able to prohibit application developers from including links to external or alternative payment options, both in the application and through the app registration process. Apple had asked the court for additional time to rewrite the policies it uses currently, which prohibit payment linking to sources other than the iOS App Store.
The judge’s current stay ruling stated that “Apple has failed to satisfy its burden, and the request as framed is DENIED. In short, Apple’s motion is based on a selective reading of this Court’s findings and ignores all of the findings which supported the injunction, namely incipient antitrust conduct including super-competitive commission rates resulting in extraordinarily high operating margins and which have not been correlated to the value of its intellectual property.”
This allows the injunction to go into effect immediately, prohibiting Apple from restricting app developers from offering external payment methods to users, although Apple is still allowed to restrict in-app payments. The judge gave Apple 30 days in which to implement the changes, which will be in effect during the appeal process. Apple recently updated App Store rules to allow developers to contact users directly about payments, a result of pressure from other lawsuits, which allows methods that bypass Apple’s 15% to 30% commission, but Epic Games (the Plaintiff in the case) is pushing for the in-app rules to be eliminated, and Google (GOOG) has recently indicated it is cutting app store fees for most developers, in a bid to quell further pressure..
The judge’s current stay ruling stated that “Apple has failed to satisfy its burden, and the request as framed is DENIED. In short, Apple’s motion is based on a selective reading of this Court’s findings and ignores all of the findings which supported the injunction, namely incipient antitrust conduct including super-competitive commission rates resulting in extraordinarily high operating margins and which have not been correlated to the value of its intellectual property.”
This allows the injunction to go into effect immediately, prohibiting Apple from restricting app developers from offering external payment methods to users, although Apple is still allowed to restrict in-app payments. The judge gave Apple 30 days in which to implement the changes, which will be in effect during the appeal process. Apple recently updated App Store rules to allow developers to contact users directly about payments, a result of pressure from other lawsuits, which allows methods that bypass Apple’s 15% to 30% commission, but Epic Games (the Plaintiff in the case) is pushing for the in-app rules to be eliminated, and Google (GOOG) has recently indicated it is cutting app store fees for most developers, in a bid to quell further pressure..
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