Apple Risks Criminal Contempt Charges In Epic Games Lawsuit

Apple ordered to stop collecting fees on third party purchases.

Today’s news comes to us from The Verge, reporting on Apple’s latest court defeat at the hands of Epic Games. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple must cease collecting fees on purchases made outside the app, in yet another ruling against the company’s attempts to dig its greasy fingers into purchases made outside its ecosystem.

This order is related to a ruling that required Apple to allow developers to point to alternative payment options to avoid the 30% cut of purchases made in-apps. In defiance of the ruling, Apple imposed a 27% commission on those purchases anyway.

In addition to the defeat, Judge Rogers has also referred the case to Attorney Patrick D. Robbins for potential criminal contempt charges. The ruling claims that Apple’s actions “cannot, in any universe, real or virtual, be viewed as product of good faith or reasonable interpretation of the Court’s orders.” As a result, Judge Rogers is holding Apple in civil contempt.

Apple has been permanently restrained from:

Imposing any commission or any fee on purchases that consumers make outside an app, and as a consequence thereof, no reason exists to audit, monitor, track or require developers to report purchases or any other activity that consumers make outside an app;
Restricting or conditioning developers’ style, language, formatting, quantity, flow or placement of links for purchases outside an app;
Prohibiting or limiting the use of buttons or other calls to action, or otherwise conditioning the content, style, language, formatting, flow or placement of these devices for purchases outside an app;
Excluding certain categories of apps and developers from obtaining link access;
Interfering with consumers’ choice to proceed in or out of an app by using anything other than a neutral message apprising users that they are going to a third-party site; and
Restricting a developer’s use of dynamic links that bring consumers to a specific product page in a logged-in state rather than to a statically defined page, including restricting apps from passing on product details, user details or other information that refers to the user intending to make a purchase.