Apple Appeals to Supreme Court as Epic Games Fight Escalates

Apple is trying for a second time to take its legal battle with Epic Games to the U.S. Supreme Court, TechCrunch reported Monday (April 6).

If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, Apple is expected to argue that courts should not be allowed to limit the fees it charges for services, according to the report.

The court battle began in 2020 over whether Epic Games could add external payments in its app, enabling the company to bypass the fees charged by Apple App Store.

Apple defeated charges that it was a monopoly in 2021, but that ruling also required the company to let developers link to external payment options.

The company appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, but the court declined to hear the case, the report said.

Apple then began allowing developers to offer external payments, but the company charged a commission on those payments that was close to that of its App Store fee.

When Epic Games argued that the commission violated the court order, a U.S. District Court agreed and found Apple in contempt.

That decision was upheld by an appeals court in December, and another court is set to decide a new rate.

Because Apple has no more options within the Ninth Circuit, where these decisions were handed down, it aims to take the battle to the Supreme Court by focusing on an issue different than the one the company tried before, per the report.

Epic Games spokesperson Natalie Munoz told TechCrunch that Apple’s motion is “another delay tactic to prevent the court from establishing significant and permanent bounds on Apple’s ability to charge junk fees on third-party payments.”

At the time of the December appeals court decision that rejected Apple’s challenge to the ruling that it had defied the court order, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said this marked “the beginning of true, untaxed competition in payments worldwide on iOS.”

When the Supreme Court declined in January 2024 to hear an appeal from Apple, it was reported that the decision left standing an appeals court ruling that could affect billions of dollars of the tech giant’s revenue.