LogInApple's legal battle with Epic Games is going on, as the company filed an opening brief saying that Epic had failed to provide evidence to support its claim that the App Store policies are breaking the antitrust law.
On Thursday, Apple urged a federal appeals court to uphold the judge's ruling, which largely upheld the company's business model of charging app developers a commission on all transactions through the App Store.
In the brief, Apple noted that Epic Games had failed to provide evidence to support its claim that the App Store policies are breaking the antitrust law saying that Epic's accusations are "unprecedented" and "unfounded" and claiming that there were not any legal errors on the judge's part.
"Epic had the burden to prove, among other things, that the challenged limitations were unreasonable restraints of trade under a framework the parties agreed on before trial began. After a 16-day bench trial, the district court found that Epic had failed to carry its burden of proof on every one of its antitrust claims. That should not surprise: throughout the history of the App Store, it is undisputed that prices have only gone down, while output has exploded. Those are the hallmarks of competition, not monopolization. To reverse, this Court would have to depart from settled law and ignore the district court's detailed findings of fact," Apple noted in the brief.
The confrontation between the two companies began in 2020 when Apple removed Epic's Fortnite from the App Store as the developer did not pay a 30% commission from each transaction within the application offering the customers the alternative payment system instead. In September 2021, in response to the removal of the app, Epic filed a lawsuit to force Apple to remove the App Store commission for developers completely.
The court ruled that Epic Games violated its contract with Apple and had to pay the company 30% of the revenue that was collected through Epic direct payments, although it also decided that Apple had to allow alternative forms of payments within apps. The tech giant filed an appeal to object that it was illegally suppressing the customers from their choice of which payment system to use and suspended a case while the appeal is pending.
Epic representatives have not yet commented on Apple's new statement.
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