Apple violated an American court order that required that the iPhone manufacturer allow greater competence for application downloads and payment methods in its lucrative App Store and will be sent to federal prosecutors, a federal judge in California ruled on Wednesday.
The US district judge Yvonne González Rogers in Oakland said in a ruling of 80 pages that Apple did not comply with its previous court order, which was imposed on an antimonopoly demand presented by the epic games of the manufacturer “Fortnite”.
“Apple’s continuous attempts to interfere with the competition will not be tolerated,” González Rogers said. She added: “This is a court order, not a negotiation. There are no gifts once a party does not take into account a court order.”
González Rogers referred to Apple and one of its executives, Alex Roman, vice president of Finance, federal prosecutors for a criminal contempt investigation into their conduct in the case.
Roman gave testimony about the steps Apple took to fulfill his court order that was “full of evil direction and direct lies,” the judge wrote.
Apple, in a statement, said: “We disagree with the decision. We will comply with the order of the court and appeal.”
The executive president of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, described the judge’s order as a significant victory for developers and consumers.
“It forces Apple to compete with other payment services instead of blocking them, and this is what we wanted all the time,” Sweeney told reporters.
Sweeney said Epic Games would aim to bring Fortnite to the Apple App Store next week. Apple in 2020 had achieved the EPIC account after the company allowed iPhone users to sail out the Apple ecosystem to obtain better payment agreements.
Epic accused Apple of suffocating competition for application downloads and overload commissions for purchases in the application.
González Rogers in 2021 found that Apple violated a California competition law and ordered the company to allow developers more freedom to direct applications users to other payment options.
Apple failed last year to persuade the United States Supreme Court to tear down the court order.
Epic Games told the Court in March 2024 that Apple was “blatant” violating the court order, even imposing a new 27% rate on application developers when Apple customers complete a purchase of applications outside the application store. Apple charges developers a 30% commission rate for purchases within the App Store.
Apple also began to show messages that warn customers about the potential danger of external links to deter the payments without apple, the alleged epic games, calling the new “commercially unusable” Apple system.
Apple has denied any irregularity. The company in a judicial presentation on March 7 told González Rogers that he undertook “extensive efforts” to comply with the court order “while preserving the fundamental characteristics of Apple’s business model and the protection of consumers.”
González Rogers suggested in a previous audience that the changes made by Apple in his App Store had no purpose “apart from querying the competition.”
In Wednesday’s ruling, González Rogers said that Apple is immediately prohibited from preventing the ability of developers to communicate with users, and that the company should not raise its new commission in purchases outside the application.
She said Apple can’t ask her to stop her failure “given the repeated delays and the severity of behavior.” She did not give opinion on whether a criminal case must be opened.
“It will be for the executive branch to decide whether Apple should be deprived of the fruits of its violation, in addition to any penalty to deter future misconduct,” the judge wrote.
