“Apple’s App Store business model has been validated. “We are extremely pleased with this decision, which is a resounding victory,” Katherine Adams, Apple’s senior vice president and general counsel, said in a conference call with reporters Friday. “As the Court recognized ‘success is not illegal,’ Apple faces rigorous competition in every segment in which we do business, and we believe customers and developers choose us because our products and services are the best in the world.” “Today the Court has affirmed what we’ve known all along: the App Store is not in violation of antitrust law,” Apple said in a statement provided to MarketWatch. However, it does find that Apple’s conduct in enforcing anti-steering restrictions is anticompetitive.” Additionally, Epic was ordered to pay damages to Apple.Īpple immediately spotlighted the latter opinion. On one crucial point, Gonzalez Rogers said, “The Court does not find that Apple is an antitrust monopolist in the submarket for mobile gaming transactions. Apple is considering all legal options, which could include seeking to block the order before the 90-day period lapses, according to an Apple representative. Apple must allow developers within 90 days to include links in their apps to other payment methods, she said.
The judge said Apple violated California’s unfair-competition law by banning developers from directing customers to other payment services.
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The split decision could signal a tectonic shift in the way apps are distributed to consumers and could have even deeper implications for operators of dominant online platforms such as AppleĪpple is “permanently restrained and enjoined from prohibiting developers from 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,” Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, the federal judge who presided over the closely watched trial in May, said in an 185-page ruling.