A few days ago, Apple doubled down on its accusations that Epic Games is trying to undermine the App Store model and profit from Apple’s ecosystem without contributing to it. Today, the company returned to court to try to make its case.
Apple tries to overturn Judge Rogers’ injunctions
As 9to5Mac readers are likely well aware, Epic Games sued Apple in 2020, after being banned from the App Store due to a remote update to Fortnite that sidestepped Apple’s In-App Purchase system.
After several court battles, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled in April that Apple had ignored her original 2021 ruling, and compelled the company to allow alternative payment methods without a 27% commission.
Apple, in turn, took the case to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (for the second time), arguing that the judge overstepped by expanding her 2021 order when she issued the April injunction.
In its appeal, Apple is asking the court either to overturn the April ruling and reassign the case to a new judge, or to vacate the 2021 injunction altogether:
The injunction breaches well-established guardrails on the civil contempt power, and its sweeping new restrictions on Apple violate several independent limits, including the Constitution itself.
[…]
This Court should reverse the district court’s contempt order and denial of Apple’s Rule 60(b)(5) motion. In the alternative, the court should vacate the new injunction and reassign this case to a different district judge for any further proceedings necessitated by this Court’s decision.
So, today, as reported by Bloomberg, Apple returned to court to present its side of the case, hoping for a more favorable outcome than in 2024, when the court upheld Judge Rogers’ 2021 ruling.
It isn’t yet clear yet how the deposition went, but it is all but certain that both sides will have more to say about it in the coming days, so we’ll report back as soon as any information from today’s deposition is made publicly available.
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