Cook'd: Judge Says Apple Lied To Court In Epic Case, Asks Feds To Mull Criminal Charges

A federal judge has said Apple execs deliberately ignored an injunction and told lies in court – and so has asked US prosecutors to consider criminal charges against the iPhone titan.

Those explosive findings emerged on Wednesday in the case of Epic Games vs Apple, the long-running matter in which the games developer sued the iGiant for the right to sell its wares and in-game items directly to users of Apple devices instead of through Cupertino’s App Store – thereby avoiding a 30 percent commission on sales and other restrictions.

Apple won nine of the ten issues considered in that case. The one issue on which it lost saw the court decide the 30 percent App Store commission was anti-competitive and ordered, via an injunction, Apple to allow developers to inform their customers about third-party payment systems.

Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct defiance of this court

Epic Games kept an eye on Apple’s compliance with that injunction, and in 2024 complained Cupertino had disobeyed the court.

District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers considered Epic’s gripe about Apple’s non-compliance, and on Wednesday delivered her decision [PDF] – which is full of unusually blunt language.

“Apple’s response to the injunction strains credulity,” Judge Rogers opened, before stating Apple “thwarted the injunction’s goals, and continued its anti-competitive conduct solely to maintain its revenue stream.”

She thinks Apple did so in two ways, one of which was by introducing a 27 percent commission that developers who use its App Store were required to pay when their customers bought stuff outside the digital bazaar.

The other was to “impose new barriers and new requirements to increase friction and increase breakage rates with full page ‘scare’ screens, static URLs, and generic statements.” The judge believe Apple’s goal was “to dissuade customer usage of alternative purchase opportunities and maintain its anti-competitive revenue stream. In the end, Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct defiance of this court’s injunction.”

Apple denied its actions violated the injunction, but failed to convince Judge Rogers, who offered the following observations about the super-corp's behavior:

The judge therefore referred the matter to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California “to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.”

• US Supreme Court doesn't want to hear Apple, Epic's gripes about in-app purchases
• Apple approves Epic Games Store on iOS in EU
• Epic brings Fortnite back to iOS in Europe, using its own app store
• British tribunal claim aims to take a bite out of Apple over App Store fees

The ruling also includes an order that “effective immediately Apple will no longer impede developers’ ability to communicate with users nor will they levy or impose a new commission on off-app purchases.”

“This is an injunction, not a negotiation,” the California judge wrote. “There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order. Time is of the essence. The court will not tolerate further delays. As previously ordered, Apple will not impede competition. The court enjoins Apple from implementing its new anti-competitive acts to avoid compliance with the injunction.”

The Register sought comment from Apple and had not received a response at the time of writing.

Epic Games is not free of sin itself: The developer recently refunded some customers after using “dark patterns” to lure them into unintended payments. ®

PS: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney just xeeted a peace offering to Apple: "We will return Fortnite to the US iOS App Store next week. Epic puts forth a peace proposal: If Apple extends the court's friction-free, Apple-tax-free framework worldwide, we'll return Fortnite to the App Store worldwide and drop current and future litigation on the topic."