35 US States, more than 50 academics, Microsoft, others take aim at iGiant and its grip on iOS ecosystem
Analysis Epic Games’ legal campaign to break Apple’s near absolute control over its iOS ecosystem received reinforcement this week from 35 US states, Microsoft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen, and more than 50 academics, among others. In 2020, Epic Games flouted Apple’s iOS App Store rules by directing players of its Fortnite game to buy in-game currency and items directly from its website at a lower price rather than through Cupertino. Apple, deprived of its required 30 per cent cut of in-app sales, responded by removing Fortnite from its iOS App Store. Epic Games answered with antitrust lawsuits in the US, Europe, UK, and Australia, a legal campaign clearly contemplated as a way to loosen Apple’s control over its iOS platform. On September 10,2021, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued a ruling that pleased neither side. She found Apple’s requirement that app developers not promote alternative payment mechanisms within their apps anti-competitive but did not find that Apple had illegally monopolized the market for mobile gaming transactions. Her decision represented the third crack in Apple’s walled garden in the space of two weeks. In early September,2021, Apple agreed to accommodate Japan’s Fair Trade Commission by allowing reader apps to include in-app links to external account setup. That was a few days after Apple agreed to settle an antitrust complaint brought by a group of app developers, Cameron et al v. Apple Inc. [PDF], with relatively inconsequential concessions that included allowing developers to communicate outside of apps, via email, about alternative purchase options. Epic Games won only one of its ten claims – the court found that the anti-steering provisions within Apple’s Developer Program License Agreement (DPLA) violate California’s Unfair Competition Law. But the game maker hasn’t yet benefited from the decision. Last month, just before the deadline when Apple was supposed to comply with the Epic Games ruling, the iPhone maker challenged the decision in the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and that court granted Apple’s request to stay Judge Gonzalez Rogers’s order until its appeal can be heard. Earlier this month, Epic Games submitted its own brief with the appeals court. Then on Thursday, the amicus briefs in support of Epic arrived. This particular set of “friend of the court” filings come from various groups – public sector, private sector, academia, and civil society – that all want to see Epic Games prevail. Taken as a whole, they argue that Judge Gonzalez Rogers’s decision is flawed. Microsoft, for example, believes the lower court failed to recognize the ways in which Apple’s conduct violates the law and it wants the appeals court to consider the consequences of Apple’s dominance more carefully. “If Apple is allowed to step between any company with online services and users of iPhones, few areas of the vast mobile economy will be safe from Apple’s interference and eventual dominance,” the company’s brief [ PDF] says.
