Apple plans to petition for its Epic Games case to be heard in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The move will mark its second appellate request in the proceedings, as Apple already appealed the first-instance verdict in the Epic Games case in late 2021.
The ongoing legal clash started in 2020, when Epic implemented changes into Fortnite in an effort to bypass Apple's payment processing mechanisms and avoid paying a 30% cut from the game's microtransactions to the iPhone maker. Apple then pulled Fortnite from the App Store, which prompted Epic to launch an antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant. And while Apple's countersuit filed in response to that move was soon dismissed, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in its favor on nine out of ten counts in the original case. However, the court also ruled that Apple must allow third-party purchase options in apps as part of the same verdict.
After the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals mostly upheld that decision in the Epic Games v. Apple case this past April, the iPhone maker is now looking to petition the Supreme Court to reconsider the second-instance verdict. In a July 3 court filing obtained by Reuters, Apple argued that the appeals court's decision to issue a nationwide injunction against Apple due to its alleged violations of California's Unfair Competition Law constitutes judicial overreach. For context, the said ruling stems from the court's finding that Apple's anti-steering policies preventing developers from directing or even so much as informing its users about third-party iOS storefronts were anticompetitive.
Although Apple intends to continue fighting the actual contents of that decision, it has now requested a stay of the court's mandate on the basis that a nationwide injunction against its anti-steering practices is a disproportional reaction to its alleged violations of California's antitrust law. The tech giant's attorneys also argued that the original lawsuit only had a single plaintiff, Epic, concluding that the court's mandate to stop Apple from enforcing its anti-steering policies against all developers of iOS apps available in the U.S. Is hence an overreaction.
While Apple is arguing that its petition to the Supreme Court has a decent chance of being heard due to the "substantial questions of law" it raises, it remains to be seen whether the ultimate appellate authority in the U.S. Agrees with that sentiment. According to the official website of the stateside judicial system, the Supreme Court is asked to review over 7,000 cases each year, but only agrees to hear "about 100-150" such petitions on an annual basis.
In 2021, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said that Fortnite won't be returning to iOS for around five or more years due to the company's ongoing legal clash with Apple. However, his latest celebratory New Year's tweet suggested that the game will reappear on the App Store sometime in 2023.