Apple's Latest Tactic in Epic Lawsuit: Focusing on Fee Structure

In a new petition, Apple argues that the Ninth Circuit's civil contempt order over App Store commissions shouldn't apply to all developers, including Microsoft and Spotify.

Apple's latest move in its ongoing lawsuit with Epic Games over App Store fees is to say that Epic's beef with Apple over its fee structure shouldn't lead to an injunction that applies to all developers that publish on the U.S. App Store. This includes other tech giants like Microsoft and Spotify, which weren't a part of this particular litigation.

Apple's new petition, which asks the U.S. Supreme Court to review the lower court ruling, argues that Epic never brought a class action and never attempted to show that enjoining Apple’s conduct against all other developers—like Microsoft or Spotify—was somehow necessary to provide relief to Epic.

In the same document, Apple also argues against the Ninth Circuit's civil contempt order over Apple's compliance with the injunction. The court had ruled that Apple must give developers the right to include links in their apps — links that could direct users to alternative payment options outside of Apple's own system — if they chose to do so. Apple did permit this as required, but charged fees on those outside purchases, leading to the contempt order.

The Ninth Circuit said that charging fees of 27% on external payments defeated the purpose of allowing them — which, well, it did. But Apple is pushing back on specific legal grounds. Its new argument focuses on whether a federal court can hold a party in civil contempt for violating the "spirit" of an injunction when the injunction itself was written in a way that left room for interpretation and said nothing about commissions.

Epic Games criticized Apple's latest move as "one last Hail Mary to delay a conclusion to this case and avoid opening up the gates to payment competition for the benefit of consumers." Earlier this month, the Supreme Court rejected Apple's request to pause additional proceedings until the court could determine whether the sanctions were justified.

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