• An appeals court has upheld a decision in Apple’s favour regarding an ongoing antitrust legal battle between the Cupertino-based company and Epic Games.
• It means that Apple is not seen to have anti-competitive tendencies when it comes to restricting third-party app stores from its devices.
• There is, however, a silver lining for Epic Games, as iOS developers can steer customers to online marketplaces.

Back in August of 2020 Fortnite co-developer and publisher Epic Games decided to take Apple to task over its restrictive rules regarding the use of third-party apps on its devices. It was a saga that seemingly lasted forever, dragging the likes of Microsoft into matters, with neither party seemingly coming out on top.

Now nearly three years later, Apple has garnered a significant win, as an appeals court has upheld a decision that rejects the claims that Apple violated federal competition law by restricting third-party app stores from its devices.

“There is a lively and important debate about the role played in our economy and democracy by online transaction platforms with market power,” the three-judge appeal court panel wrote regarding its decision. “Our job as a federal court of appeals, however, is not to resolve that debate — nor could we even attempt to do so. Instead, in this decision, we faithfully applied existing precedent to the facts,” it added.

It remains to be seen if Epic Games will continue to fight the decision, especially as the panel found that the company’s legal representatives failed to make a strong enough case, despite agreeing that Apple’s behaviour was indeed anti-competitive in nature. Needless to say, Apple is quite happy with the outcome.

“Today’s decision reaffirms Apple’s resounding victory in this case, with nine of ten claims having been decided in Apple’s favor. For the second time in two years, a federal court has ruled that Apple abides by antitrust laws at the state and federal levels,” the company shared in a statement to Bloomberg.

“The App Store continues to promote competition, drive innovation, and expand opportunity, and we’re proud of its profound contributions to both users and developers around the world. We respectfully disagree with the court’s ruling on the one remaining claim under state law and are considering further review,” it continued.

In terms of immediate reaction, Epic Games founder and CEO, Tim Sweeney, took to Twitter to share his thoughts on the ruling. The only positive in his view, is that panel decided that Apple was not allowed to restrict app developers from directing users to other online portals should they wish to transact.

“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. We’re working on next steps,” he pointed out.

It’s unclear if this is the end to this ongoing saga, but for Apple appears to have come out on top, for what it matters.

[Image – Photo by Sumudu Mohottige on Unsplash]