Tech giant Apple violated a U.S. court order requiring it to change its App Store rules to allow greater competition among developers and will now be referred to federal prosecutors, a federal judge in California ruled April 30.
“Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court’s Injunction,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote. “It did so with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anticompetitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation ... For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple.”
The judge added that the court will not tolerate further delays from the tech firm.
She referred Apple and its vice president of finance, Alex Roman, to Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Patrick D. Robbins for a criminal contempt investigation into their conduct in the case.
Roman provided testimony about the steps Apple took to comply with Gonzalez Rogers’s injunction that was “replete with misdirection and outright lies,” the judge wrote.
The Epoch Times reached out to Roman for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
“The Court takes no position on whether a criminal prosecution is or is not warranted,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote. “The decision is entirely that of the United States Attorney. It will be for the executive branch to decide whether Apple should be deprived of the fruits of its violation, in addition to any penalty geared to deter future misconduct.”
Apple said in a statement, “We strongly disagree with the decision. We will comply with the court’s order and we will appeal.”
The ruling by Gonzalez Rogers was issued as part of the ongoing legal dispute between Apple and Epic Games, the developer of the popular video game “Fortnite.”
Apple typically takes a 30 percent cut in commission for in-app purchases. Epic Games accused Apple of stifling competition by requiring consumers to get apps through the App Store and buy digital content inside an app using its own system,
Epic Games accused Apple of stifling competition by requiring consumers to get apps through its App Store, use its payment system for in-app purchases. Epic Games also accused Apple of overcharging commissions for in-app purchases.
Apple last year failed to persuade the Supreme Court to strike down the injunction.
Epic Games further alleged that Apple began displaying messages warning customers of the potential danger of external links to deter non-Apple payments and called the new system “commercially unusable.”
Apple has denied any wrongdoing. The company told Gonzalez Rogers in a March 7 court filing that it undertook “extensive efforts” to comply with her injunction “while preserving the fundamental features of Apple’s business model and safeguarding consumers.”
As part of her April 30 ruling, Gonzalez Rogers barred Apple from impeding developers’ ability to communicate with users and said the company must not impose any commission or any fee on off-app purchases.
She also said the company cannot restrict developers’ style, language formatting, or placement of links for purchases outside of an app or interfere with consumers’ choice to proceed in or out of an app with anything beyond “a neutral message apprising users that they are going to a third-party site.”
Gonzalez Rogers said Apple cannot ask her to pause her ruling “given the repeated delays and severity of the conduct.”
Sweeney also put forward what he described as 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,” he said.
The Epoch Times reached out to Apple for further comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
