The appeal in last year’s lawsuit between Apple and Epic Games is set for October 21, FOSS Patents says. Both companies appealed the ruling and are allowed to plead their cases on that day.
The appeal is in the San Francisco Court of Appeals, FOSS Patents says. The hearing will take place between 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. local time. That is between 19:30 and 20:30 in the Benelux. Both companies will be given twenty minutes during the appeal to make their objections clear. This is necessary, because both companies appealed. Apple was forced to allow links to alternative payment systems in the App Store, so the company appealed. Epic largely lost the case and therefore wants to plead its case again.
The lawsuit between Apple and Epic ran last year and was one of the most controversial cases in tech history. Epic claimed that Apple had a monopoly on app distribution on iOS and wanted the judge to allow alternative payment methods and app stores on that platform. Apple defended itself by pointing out that there are many more download stores and developers can always choose not to publish apps on iOS.
The judge largely went with Apple last year. The judge ruled that the mobile game market is the relevant market and that Apple controls 55 percent of this market, including ‘exceptionally high profit margins’. These may be elements to conclude that there has been a violation of the competition rules, but according to the judge that was not enough. She stated that Apple could not be judged on this, because Apple’s market share does not yet exceed 55 percent, other parties are also starting to step into the mobile game market and because Epic Games has not paid enough attention to this topic.
