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Title: Court orders Apple to stop collecting fees for purchases made outside
the App Store

Date: Thu, 01 May 2025 11:00:36 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/court-order...

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has ruled that Apple violated her own ruling
back in 2021 on the lawsuit Epic Games filed against Apple a year before.
Now, it's ordering (PDF) Apple to stop collecting commissions on purchases
that weren't paid through the App Store effective immediately. In 2021,
Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple did not hold an App Store monopoly. However,
she also said that the company must allow developers to direct users to other
payment systems that would let them bypass the 30 percent commission fee it
collects from App Store purchases.

In a legal filing by Epic Games last year, it accused Apple of non-
compliance, since it still took a 27 percent cut for purchases made outside
the App Store and even showed users pop-up screens warning them that paying
outside its own store may not be secure. For members of the iOS Small
Business Program, it took a smaller 12 percent commission. But the judge
explained in her new ruling that Apple wasn't supposed to collect any fee at
all. "Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct
defiance of this courtΓÇÖs injunction," she said.

In addition to prohibiting Apple from collecting fees for external purchases,
she also barred the company from showing users "scare screens" discouraging
them from using third-party payment systems. She prohibited Apple from
creating rules that would prevent developers from presenting customers with
buttons and links for external payments, as well. Apple said it will pursue
an appeal, but that it will comply with the court's orders. "We strongly
disagree with the decision. We will comply with the court's order and we will
appeal," an Apple spokesperson told The New York Times.

In her ruling, Rogers said that the documents Apple submitted last year
showed that App Store lead Phil Schiller advocated for the company to stop
collecting fees on web links during a 2023 meeting. But Apple's former Chief
Financial Officer Luca Maestri convinced Tim Cook otherwise. Cook also asked
his people to revise the scare screen for web links "to reference the fact
that AppleΓÇÖs privacy and security standards do not apply to purchases made
on the web.ΓÇ¥ Apple knew exactly what it was doing and "at every turn chose
the most anticompetitive option," Gonzalez Rogers wrote. Further the
company's Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, allegedly lied under oath to
hide the truth. Thus, the judge has asked the US attorney for the Northern
District of California to investigate Apple and Roman for criminal contempt.

In a tweet, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney announced that it will bring back
Fortnite for iOS in the US next week. He also promised to return Fortnite to
the App Store worldwide ΓÇö and to drop any lawsuit covering the issue ΓÇö if
Apple applies a commission-free tax-free payment framework everywhere.

We will return Fortnite to the US iOS App Store next week.

Epic puts forth a peace proposal: If Apple extends the court's friction-free,
Apple-tax-free framework worldwide, we'll return Fortnite to the App Store
worldwide and drop current and future litigation on the topic.
https://t.co/bIRTePm0Tv

ΓÇö Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) April 30, 2025

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-
tech/court-orders-apple-to-stop-collecting-fees-for-purchases-made-outside-
the-app-store-110036376.html?src=rss

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