Apple violated an order from the US court which forced the iPhone manufacturer to allow greater competition for application downloads and payment methods in its appearance of the lucrative app and will be referred to federal prosecutors, a federal judge in California judged on Wednesday.
The American district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland declared in an 80 -page decision that Apple had not been in accordance with his previous injunction, which was imposed in a antitrust trial brought by the “Fortnite” Epic Maker games.
“Apple’s continuous attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated,” said Gonzalez Rogers. She added: “This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There is no working heads once a party voluntarily ignores an order of the court.”
Gonzalez Rogers referred Apple and one of his leaders, Alex Roman, vice-president of finance, to federal prosecutors for a criminal investigation for contempt of their conduct in the case.
Roman testified about the measures that Apple took to comply with its injunction which was “filled with direction errors and outright lies,” wrote the judge.
Apple in a press release said: “We are strongly disagreed with the decision. We will comply with the court order and we will call. ”
The CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, described the judge’s order an important victory for developers and consumers.
“This forces Apple to compete with other payment services rather than blocking them, and that is what we wanted from the start,” Sweeney told journalists.
Sweeney said that Epic Games would aim to bring Fortnite back to Apple App Store next week. Apple in 2020 had removed the EPIC account after the company allowed iPhone users navigating outside the Apple ecosystem for better payment offers.
Epic accused Apple of STRIVER competition for application downloads and overload commissions for integrated purchases.
Gonzalez Rogers in 2021 discovered that Apple had violated a competition law in California and ordered the company to allow developers more freedom to direct applications to other payment options.
Apple failed last year to persuade the United States Supreme Court to reduce the injunction.
Epic Games told court in March 2024 that Apple had “obviously” violated the court order, in particular by imposing new costs of 27% on application developers when Apple customers finish a purchase of application outside the App Store. Apple invoices developers of commission fees of 30% for purchases in the App Store.
Apple has also started to display messages warning customers from the potential danger of external links in order to dissuade payments without Apple, alleged epic games, calling the new Apple system “commercially unusable”.
Apple denied any reprehensible act. The company in a legal file on March 7 told Gonzalez Rogers that it had undertaken “in -depth efforts” to comply with the injunction “while preserving the fundamental characteristics of the Apple’s commercial model and protecting consumers”.
Gonzalez Rogers suggested during a previous hearing that the modifications made by Apple in its app Store had no goal “other than to stifle the competition”.
In Wednesday’s decision, Gonzalez Rogers said that Apple was immediately forbidden to interfere with the developers’ ability to communicate with users, and the company should not collect its new commission on off -application purchases.
She said that Apple could not ask her to suspend her decision “given the repeated delays and the severity of the driving.” She did not take any opinions on the question of whether a criminal case should be opened.
“It will be up to the executive branch to decide whether Apple should be deprived of the fruits of its violation, in addition to any penalty aimed at detering future faults,” wrote the judge.
