A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Apple must loosen its grip in its app store and stop collecting a commission in some applications sales, limiting a five -year antitrust case presented by epic games that aimed cutting the power of Apple.
The judge, Yvonne González Rogers, of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, rebuked Apple for frustrating a previous ruling in the lawsuit and said that the company should prevent the court from being disobeyed. She criticized Tim Cook, Executive Director of Apple, and accused other executives in the company of La Lie.
In his previous ruling, Judge Gonzales Rogers ordered Apple to allow applications to provide users for external links to pay developers directly for services. Applications could avoid the 30 percent commission that Apple charges in its App Store and potentially collect less for services.
On the other hand, Judge González Rogers said Wednesday that Apple created a new system that forced applications with external sales to pay a 27 percent commission to the company. Apple also created emerging screens that discouraged the client to pay elsewhere, tell that payments outside the App Store may not be safe.
“Apple sought to maintain an income flow that was worth billions in the direct challenge of the court order of this court,” Judge González Rogers wrote.
In response, he said that Apple could no longer take sales commissions outside the application store. He also restricted the company to write rules that would prevent developers from creating buttons or links to pay in the store and said he could not create messages to discourage users to make purchases. In addition, Judge González Rogers asked the United States Prosecutor for the Northern District of California to investigate the company for criminal is contempt.
The ruling, a great victory for the epic and a sharp defeat for Apple, has the potential to change the economy of the application by increasing the money that developers collect while reducing the rates that flow to Apple. That attacks one of Apple’s main businesses, with its application store for a long time the most prominent destination for people to download mobile games, productivity tools and other programs.
“There will be a lot of freedom for developers to obtain better offers and for consumers to get better offers,” said Tim Sweeney, executive director of Epic. “This is a wonderful and wonderful day for everyone.”
A spokeswoman for Apple, Olivia Dalton, said in a statement: “We disagree with the decision. We will comply with the court order and appeal.”
Apple’s shares sank 1.5 percent in negotiation outside.
Epic, the Fortnite game manufacturer, brought the antitrust demand against Apple in 2020. In the demand, Epic accused Apple of forcing application manufacturers to use their payment system in exchange for access to the App Store, which is only distributed. The rules allowed Apple to raise a 30 percent commission in many transactions.
The App Store constitutes a large part of the almost $ 100 billion in annual revenues of services that Apple collects.
In a ruling two years later, Judge González Rogers stopped or declared that Apple had the monopoly in the mobile games market, as Epic had argued. That meant that Apple avoided the possible result of the case. But he discovered that the company had violated California laws against unfair competition by preventing developers from offering users alternative ways to pay applications.
Last year, Epic complained to the court that Apple was not complying with the ruling because it had created a new set of rates and rules for developers. The judge ordered Apple to provide the documents that explained how he had created his new system.
Apple’s documents showed that they tried to discourage alternative payments and maintain the largest amount of traditional commission of 30 percent. At a July 2023 meeting, Phil Schiller, who supervises the App Store, advocated that Apple does not take commission, but Luca Master, Apple’s Chief of Finance at that time, defended a rate of 27 percent. Mr. Cook put on the side of Mr. Maestri, according to the documents.
Mr. Cook also had dinner that when people click on the left to pay applications outside the application store, they show a “fear” screen that says “that Apple’s privacy and security standards do not apply to purchases made on the web.”
“Apple knew exactly what I was doing every step chose the most anti -petite option,” Judge González Rogers said.
She said Apple executives had “direct songs under oath” and added: “Cook chosen badly.”
