Apple today formalized its challenge to the contempt ruling in its long-running legal battle with Epic Games, filing its opening merits brief with the U.S. Supreme Court. Here are the details.
As 9to5Mac readers know, the Supreme Court recently accepted Apple’s request to review a contempt ruling in the lawsuit Epic Games brought against the company in 2020.
In a nutshell, although Apple came out on top on most of Epic Games’ claims in the original lawsuit, it lost on one key point, with the court finding that Apple’s anti-steering rules violated California’s Unfair Competition Law. As a result, the court issued a permanent injunction requiring Apple to allow developers to include links and other calls to action that direct users to third-party payment options.
Apple Inc. and its officers, agents, servants, employees, and any person in active concert or participation with them (“Apple”), are hereby permanently restrained and enjoined from prohibiting developers from (i) including in their apps and their metadata buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to In-App Purchasing and (ii) communicating with customers through points of contact obtained voluntarily from customers through account registration within the app. Apple adds that Epic itself acknowledged that the injunction “did not explicitly prohibit” the company from charging a commission on purchases made outside the App Store. Still, Epic argued that the new commission and related rules violated the “spirit” of the injunction, and the district court agreed. Apple also takes aim at the Ninth Circuit’s broader standard, arguing that it is an outlier in allowing parties to be held in contempt for violating the “spirit” of an injunction. That approach lets courts decide after the fact that conduct was prohibited even when the injunction itself never clearly said so, according to Apple.
Today, Apple filed its official opening merits brief, laying out its case for why the contempt ruling should be overturned.
