Mike Peterson
Apple on Friday submitted a final filing in its ongoing legal battle with Epic Games, arguing that an injunction targeting anti-steering on the App Store should get tossed out.
In a cross-appeal brief submitted to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Apple lays out its argument as to why the anti-steering injunction was "legally improper." More specifically, the iPhone maker argues that the court handed down an "unprecedented result" despite the fact that Epic did not prove harm.
"Epic failed to prove direct or indirect harm," the brief reads. "In the district court, Epic introduced no evidence of injury-in-fact at any point in time. The UCL judgment should be reversed for that reason alone."
Apple outlines several main arguments, including the fact that Epic Games did not prove its legal requirement of "standing." That's because Epic Games is no longer iOS developer and can't suffer an injury from a guideline that only applies to that category.
Additionally, Apple says there was insufficient evidence to prove that its anti-steering provision actually caused harm to market competition.
The Cupertino tech giant also says that the injunction improperly applies to all iOS developers. Because Epic opted out of a class action by filing its own lawsuit against Apple, the company says it is the only plaintiff on which the injunction can apply.
"All of this comes full circle: Epic failed to prove at trial— and is unable to identify any evidence on appeal— that the anti-steering provisions had any adverse effect whatsoever on Epic," the brief reads.
Charles Martin
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3 Comments
The Epic vs Apple trial proceedings went remarkably fast imo. Even with that speed, the market definition of "digital mobile gaming transactions" used by the Court should be crunched up and thrown away. The Court defined the market as narrowly as possible, which was a plus for Epic, essentially as in-app purchases in games on Android and iOS. That was it. Apple should be able to get the judgment thrown away solely based on that.
In the accounting for the digital mobile gaming transactions market, the Nintendo Switch was discussed but was excluded in the accounting of Apple's market share in the Court defined market because lack of data. The Court knew cloud gaming was coming but was excluded because it wasn't available yet. Well, a year later after the decision, we now have Cloud gaming with multiple Cloud services available on iOS, the Nintendo Switch continues to be a success and the Steam Deck is now available. That's direct evidence that Apple wasn't harming competition in the "digital mobile gaming transactions" market, and in fact, the number of ways to play Fortnite while mobile has only increased.
Reading that Court judgement made me pretty aghast. That market definition should have never been put on paper, er, a computer document. Good judgements are never made when applicable data is excluded.
Self-preferencing and anti-steering are not the same thing.