Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to news in the morning of June 9, Beijing time, Apple and Epic Game Company, the developer of "Fortnite", both asked the court to reconsider their antitrust rulings. In April, a US appeals court ruled that Apple had to allow links to be placed in the apps of various development companies, but did not object to App Store's "apple tax".

Apple and Epic both filed separate court documents on Wednesday challenging the decision of a three-member panel of judges in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, California, who reportedly accepted the appeal.

The legal teams of both companies demanded that either a panel of three judges rehear the appeal, or that the appeals court should let all the judges (that is, a panel of 11 judges) hear the case.

The lawsuit between Apple and Epic has a long history, involving a 30% commission on developers' income in the Apple App Store. In 2021, a federal district court in California ruled that it was illegal for Apple to require software developers to provide a 30% commission on sales. The panel of three judges of the Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the grass-roots court.

During the trial, the California grass-roots court found that Apple violated California's law on fair competition in the market, but did not violate the federal antitrust law of the United States.

In its latest appeals court filing, Apple argued that the 30 per cent commission was conducive to fair competition in the market and did not violate any antitrust law, and it opposed the court's national ban on the commission policy.

Epic told the appellate court that its charges against Apple are directly related to the "core mission" of US federal antitrust laws to promote market competition. The company believes that the appellate court did not strike a close and careful balance between the so-called benefits that Apple's 30% commission policy brings to consumers and the effect of blocking market competition.

It is reported that the Federal Court of Appeal in the United States has rarely met the requirement of "all judges to participate in the trial." Last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals received a total of 646 requests for all judges to come forward collectively to hear appeals, but the court met only 12 of them. In 2021, the Court of Appeal dispatched all the judges to hear only nine appeals.

The U.S. Supreme Court may make the final decision on this protracted lawsuit.

Representatives of Apple and Epic did not comment on the latest judicial requirements of both sides.

As the case has entered the appeal process, the decision of the grass-roots court is currently on hold and has not yet been implemented.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, the presiding judge of the primary court, said in the judgment that third-party developers in the Apple App Store provided consumers with other payment links or buttons in order to bypass Apple's own in-app payment system, and Apple had no right to stop these actions of third-party developers.

But Rogers did not provide more detailed guidance on how the Apple App Store accepts external payment links or buttons.

Apple's mandatory use of its own in-app payment system has sparked controversy in many parts of the world, with antitrust regulators in South Korea, the Netherlands and Japan requiring Apple to open payment channels for third-party apps.

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