When the Apple vs Epic court battle concluded earlier this year, Apple was ordered to remove the restriction which forced developers to make use of Apple’s in-app payment systems.
Of course, Apple filed a motion to stay this injunction and that motion has been denied.
“In short, Apple’s motion is based on a selective reading of this Court’s findings and ignores all of the findings which supported the injunction, namely incipient antitrust conduct including supercompetitive commission rates resulting in extraordinarily high operating margins and which have not been correlated to the value of its intellectual property,” wrote US District Judge, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.
One of Apple’s main arguments against this injunction is that allowing external links would compromise the safeguards of its App Store.
“This will be the first time Apple has ever allowed live links in an app for digital content. It’s going to take months to figure out the engineering, economic, business, and other issues,” Apple’s attorney Mark Perry said according to a report from The Verge.
“It is exceedingly complicated. There have to be guardrails and guidelines to protect children, to protect developers, to protect consumers, to protect Apple. And they have to be written into guidelines that can be explained and enforced and applied,” Perry added.
However, Rogers isn’t buying what Apple is selling.
“That the injunction may require additional engineering or guidelines is not evidence of irreparable injury. Rather, at best, it only suggests that more time is needed to comply. Apple, though, did not request additional time to comply. It wants an open-ended stay with no requirement that it make any effort to comply. Time is not irreparable injury,” wrote the judge.
Furthermore, Apple’s claim that developers may not understand the scope of the injunction was waved off and Rogers even said that the developers have not indicated confusion in this regard.
“Apple still maintains the convenience of IAP [in-app payments] and, if it can compete on pricing, developers may opt to capitalize on that convenience, including any reassure that Apple provides to consumers that it may provide a safer or better choice. The fact remains: it should be their choice. Consumer information, transparency, and consumer choice is in the interest of the public,” added Rogers.
Apple is now making moves to appeal to the Ninth Circuit for a stay.
Should that not happen though, the injunction takes effect on 9th December and that means Apple has under a month left to insure it complies with the injunction.
