Justice summons Apple to change the means of payment on the App Store

The legal battle continues, and is clearly not over, but Apple has just suffered a serious setback. A US federal judge on Tuesday, November 9, rejected the appeal lodged by the American giant of a court decision opposing it to video game publisher Epic Games.

Apple had requested, pending a final decision, a suspension of this measure which allows application developers to offer an alternative payment system to its own. But that judgment could take years.

The maker of iPhones argued that it needed more time, beyond the required date of December 9, to reconfigure its system which prohibits developers from offering any means of payment other than that of the App Store for their applications, and which requires them to pay a commission to the Apple brand.

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But Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that “Apple’s request is based on a selective reading of the court’s conclusions and ignores all the conclusions which supported the injunction”.

“Extremely complicated”

“This is going to be the first time that Apple will allow live links in an app for digital content. It will take months to understand the technical, economic, commercial and other issues ”, said Apple lawyer Mark Perry during a virtual hearing, according to the specialized site The Verge. “It’s extremely complicated”, he pleaded.

The group reacted to the decision, believing, according to a spokesperson, that“No further business changes are expected to come into effect until all appeals in this matter are resolved”. Apple intends to appeal on this issue of delay.

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In the lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple, the judge had, on September 10, imposed on Apple to leave more freedom to publishers, allowing them in particular to bypass the commission levied by the technology giant.

However, it had largely rejected the monopoly accusations against Apple and denounced by Epic, which represented good news for the maker of iPhones accused on all sides of infringements of competition law. The judge considered that the apple group was not in an illegal monopoly situation: “Apple does not have a monopoly on the market for transactions in mobile games”.

Epic Games, the developer of the Fortnite game, which had been calling for such a measure for a year, had appealed against this decision.

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The World with AFP

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