The judge in Apple’s case versus Epic has denied the company a stay on implementing court-ordered App Store changes until appeals are exhausted.
Apple was the clear winner in its legal spat with Epic. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple was not a monopoly and agreed with Apple that the company’s App Store approach likely results in a more secure environment for its customers.
The only point Epic won, out of 10 counts, was to force Apple to allow developers to place in-app access to outside payment methods, making it easier for customers and developers to bypass Apple’s payment system. Despite Apple’s overwhelming victory, the company appealed the one count it lost and wanted a stay that would allow it to continue operating unchanged until the appeals process is exhausted.
Judges Rogers has shut down Apple’s request, saying the company must implement the changes while it pursues its appeals.
“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,” Judge Rogers writes, via AppleInsider.
Not surprisingly, Apple plans to appeal Judge Rogers’ decision not to stay her decision during the appeal (at what point does appealing decisions about an appeal take on an Inception feel?).
“Apple believes no additional business changes should be required to take effect until all appeals in this case are resolved. We intend to ask the Ninth Circuit for a stay based on these circumstances,” the company told Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
Despite being an Apple user and fan for more than two decades, given the current sentiment toward Big Tech, this writer believes Apple should take its win, thank the judge, make the change and drop the appeals. Doing so would likely go a long way toward heading off further scrutiny from lawmakers, and certainly help the company come across as less of a bully to developers.