Apple and an executive lied under oath in Epic Games case according to court ruling
The judge in the case states that Apple chose the 'most anticompetitive option' at every opportunity.
Judge Rogers has ruled that Apple and an executive lied under oath in its case against Epic Games. The lie pertains to the fees Apple levies against companies for using both its App Store purchases as well as developers’ own links.
The Apple vs Epic Games case took an interesting turn today, April 30, as Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers said in a court filing that Apple “willfully chose to ignore the Injunction, willfully chose to create and impose another supracompetitive rate and new restrictions, and thus willfully violated the injunction.”
Source: Epic Games vs Apple
This comes as Rogers declares that Apple Vice President of Finance Alex Roman lied to the court about when Apple implemented its 27 percent fees on purchases on its platform from developers that directed consumers to use a link. This is an alternative payment method to Apple’s own App Store purchases, which have a 30 percent fee.
According to Rogers, her ruling regarding off-app purchases would not have a fee, however Apple implemented one. This implementation took place in 2024. Rogers states that Roman lied to the court about when Apple decided to levy these fees and neither Apple, nor its counsel, corrected the information he provided.
The court document goes on to state that Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the injunction. However, Tim Cook ignored the advice and listened instead to his finance team. “Cook chose poorly,” writes Rogers.
Rogers was scathing in her assessment of the trillion dollar company, writing, “In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option.”
The court has now ordered Apple to not impose restrictions on its platform that would “prohibit consumer access to and awareness of competitive alternatives”. At the same time, Epic Games has announced it would return Fortnite to the US App Store, provided Apple implements these levy-free rules worldwide.
Find more information about this five-year saga on our Apple vs Epic Games page.
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