In the case between Apple and Epic Games, the case judge, Gonzales Rogers, has already issued a ruling in Epic.
It is determined that Apple violates California’s unfair competition law, which has resulted in a permanent injunction against Apple, which takes effect in the next ninety days.
With this, the company is ordered to allow the developers of the App Store to offer users to other payment systems. In this way, they can avoid collecting 30% of the payments within the application that Apple demanded until now.
This changes the company’s scenario since the ruling allows Epic to offer different products to users through the Apple and Google application stores. In turn, they allow other payment systems in their application stores.
In the court order details, it is contemplated that Apple cannot prevent developers from communicating with customers through means of contact that they have voluntarily located at the time of registering within the application.
On the other hand, Apple is also permanently prohibited from preventing developers from including in their metadata and applications “external links, buttons or other calls to action that redirect customers to other shopping modules, apart from purchases within the app.”
While in all other cases, the judge has ruled in favor of Apple, stipulating that the App Store does not violate antitrust law. In the case of Apple’s counterclaim for breach of contract against Epic, it has ruled in favor of Apple.
So now Epic will have to pay $ 3.65 million, the equivalent of 30% of the $ 12.2 million that the developer earned from Fortnite iOS players through Epic’s direct payment system during August and October 2020.
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However, this court order will mark a before and after from its entry into force, because Apple stopped receiving the billions it received as part of 30% of the iOs applications and had to pay the game developers.
The best example of this are companies like Netflix and Spotify that prevent their users from registering or subscribing through their iOS applications due to Apple’s cut.
Although Apple will likely appeal in some respects the ruling of Judge Yvonne González Rogers, the head of global affairs and legal director of Spotify, Horacio Gutiérrez, has been very pleased by the ruling through a statement.
There is a great need for legislation to address these and many other unfair practices like that of Apple, which engaged in anti-competitive conduct and has permanently banned its provisions against the right direction. These are some of the things he has said.