Epic Games Mounts New Appeal in Case Against Apple

Epic Games wants a federal appeals court to overturn a ruling from September that rejected much of the Fortnite maker’s antitrust case against Apple’s App Store.

As Bloomberg News reported Thursday (Jan. 20), Epic told the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that a lower-court judge had “erred” when she determined App Store rules and restrictions didn’t violate antitrust law.

The game company’s filing argues that Epic had shown “Apple unlawfully maintains its monopolies in the iOS app distribution and in-app payment solutions markets by expressly excluding all competitors.” In addition, Epic says Apple possesses “ample economic power to coerce developers” into using its own payment system.

Read more: Apple Asks Court to Halt App Store Payments Order

The filing is the latest battle in an ongoing legal war between Apple and Epic that stretches back to 2020, when Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store. That was in response to Epic’s creation of a workaround to paying a 30% fee on customers’ in-app purchases.

The case went to trial in May of last year, with the companies fighting over the App Store policies and whether Apple hinders competition. Although Apple won on nine of the 10 counts in the case, the court did order it to alter the App Store’s policies.

In September, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered an injunction against Apple, telling the iPhone maker it could not bar developers from putting in links or taking other steps to move users away from in-app purchases.

Read more: Ruling: Apple Can’t Force In-App Purchasing

Apple appealed the ruling, but Rogers ruled against them. Then in December, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Apple, issuing a stay of the injunction.

“Apple has demonstrated, at minimum, that its appeal raises serious questions on the merits of the district court’s determination that Epic Games, Inc. failed to show Apple’s conduct violated any antitrust laws but did show that the same conduct violated California’s Unfair Competition Law,” said the ruling handed down by the Ninth Circuit court.