Report: Apple Aims to Take Epic Games Case to Supreme Court

Apple is reportedly looking to take its battle with Epic Games to the Supreme Court.

The tech giant said in a court filing that it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its challenge to a ruling issued Friday (June 30) by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Reuters reported Monday (July 3).

Apple did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

The Friday ruling kept in place most of a 2021 court ruling and rejected petitions from both Apple and Epic Games that objected to parts of an April ruling that also upheld the earlier ruling, according to the Reuters report.

Apple is objecting to the order that kept in place part of the 2021 ruling that said Apple could not prohibit developers from offering payment options that take consumers outside its App Store, the report said.

In its Monday filing, Apple said the 9th Circuit reached too far when it issued a nationwide injunction and that its petition to the Supreme Court will raise “far-reaching and important” questions about judges who do so, per the report.

For its part, Epic Games had petitioned the 9th Circuit to revive its claims that Apple’s restrictions on app distribution and payments services amount to antitrust violations, according to the report.

The April appeals court ruling upheld the earlier ruling that said Apple can no longer prohibit links enabling payments outside its App Store.

The court sided with Apple on nine other matters, however, including agreeing with an earlier ruling that Apple hasn’t violated antitrust laws.

While acknowledging that Apple had prevailed on those matters in the April ruling, Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said at the time in a tweet: “Fortunately, the court’s positive decision rejecting Apple’s anti-steering provisions frees iOS developers to send consumers to the web to do business with them directly there.”

The legal war between Apple and Epic began in 2020, when Apple removed the Epic game Fortnite from the App Store after Epic created a workaround to avoid paying the 30% fee on customers’ in-app purchases, and went to trial in 2021.