Once Again, Epic Fails In Its Antitrust Quest Against Apple

Legal Issues

from the failed-epic-quest dept

As we noted two and a half years ago when Epic filed its antitrust lawsuit against Apple, it seemed like a pretty big uphill climb legally speaking. The whole thing seemed more like “contract negotiation via antitrust judicial battle” rather than a legitimate antitrust claim. And, so far, it looks like we were correct. The district court ruling a year and a half ago mostly sided with Apple, noting that “the Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws.”

The only part that Epic won was an injunction against Apple’s “anti-steering” provisions, that forbade Epic (or others) from pushing users to complete transactions off app, so that Apple doesn’t get the 30% cut. That was seen as a bridge too far.

Epic appealed to the 9th Circuit over the antitrust claims and the 9th Circuit gave a pretty complete victory to Apple. While the 9th Circuit disagrees with some of the lower court’s ruling, in the end analysis it basically leads to the same result: no antitrust violation. Apple is allowed to set its own rules for its own app store, but it does leave in place the lower court’s injunction against the “anti-steering” stuff, though procedurally leaves that open to a later appeal.

Epic can (and likely will) ask for an en banc rehearing, and then could seek Supreme Court review too, though I’m not sure either move would succeed. It is a “big” case, but I’m really not sure it’s presenting any novel issues. Epic doesn’t like Apple’s rules, but Apple’s app store just doesn’t reach the level of a monopoly when you apply the relevant tests for what market we’re talking about.

Key to this, as the 9th Circuit ruling noted, is that there are “legally cognizable procompetitive rationales” for the way Apple handles things. It notes that Apple’s security rationale also is reasonable, and pro-consumer (which should raise some questions about the bills like Open App Markets that would undermine this rationale).

There’s not much more to say about this case at this point. It will be interesting to see if a rehearing or SCOTUS cert petition do anything. However, it does put another nail in the coffin for the odd belief over the past few years that some people could simply ignore the last few decades of antitrust law, where you have to actually put in the work to accurately define the market, and not just assume that “big” is automatically bad and anti-competitive.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, anti-steering, antitrust, app markets, competition, in app payments, security
Companies: apple, epic