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Apple has been featured to criminal prosecutors by a federal judge who discovered that a tech giant requiring US App Store rules to be changed had intentionally “blocked” legal orders.
In Wednesday’s poignant order, the judge discovered that one of Apple’s financial executives had lied under oath to hide their attempts to avoid an injunction, marking a surprising b-response to the iPhone maker and a new twist in a long legal battle with the epic game.
“Apple has deliberately chosen not to explicitly adhere to creating new anti-competitive barriers that maintain design and effectively value revenue streams,” writes federal judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of California.
This was a “significant miscalculation,” she wrote. “As usual, the cover-up made it worse.”
“The court will refer to the issue with US attorneys for the Northern District of California to investigate whether the criminal cont crime proceedings are appropriate,” she wrote.
The injunction comes from the epic game of the famous antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple in 2020. iPhone makers have largely defeated the suit in courts and subsequent appeals.
However, the company still faces an injunction that requires developers to change rules that prevent developers from piloting customers outside the app store, where they can avoid Apple’s extra charges for digital payments.
Apple’s App Store is growing its services business, generating $8.6 billion in global revenue in the first quarter of the year, according to Sensor Tower estimates.
Apple can sue your order. We did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
Epic Games lawyer Gary Bornstein said the decision to refer the company to criminal prosecutors in a civil antitrust case was unusual. “I’ve never seen it.”
Apple has created a mechanism that allows developers to change the rules in response to judges’ injunctions and can instruct developers to purchase outside the app. For example, on the developer’s website. However, we continued to ask for a 27% commission on these purchases by requiring developers to report sales to the company.
Epic Games argued this, violating the injunction as other measures took Apple to disappoint the developer from using the option. Several Apple executives testified at the February hearing about their efforts to comply. The first hearing in May 2024 was postponed after the judge asked for more internal documents from the iPhone maker.
In order Wednesday, Gonzalez Rogers said it had created a compliance plan with the aim of maintaining its multi-billion dollar revenue stream by creating new barriers to locking customers into the App Store.
“To conceal the truth, Vice Chairman of Treasury, Alex Roman, lied under oath,” the judge wrote. Documents discovered during the case revealed that “Apple “knows exactly what it is doing and chose the most anti-competitive option every turn.”
Senior Apple executive Phil Schiller, who testified before a judge earlier this year, had insisted on Apple introducing new fees, the judge found.
However, Chief Executive Tim Cook said, “I ignored Schiller and allowed him instead. [then] “The judge said to convince Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise.”
Maestri left her role as CFO earlier this year.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said on Wednesday that the company will return to popularity Fortnite Next week I’ll be playing the game in the app store. Apple pulled the game out of the store in August 2020 when Epic intentionally bypassed its payment policy.
Apple faces similar pressures in Europe than the App Store rules. Earlier this month, the EU fined high-tech groups 500 million euros for not complying with regulations that similarly require app developers to provide the platform to consumers.
