The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined a request to hear an antitrust dispute between Apple Inc. and Epic Games Inc., the publisher of Fortnite, in what amounts to a pyrrhic victory for Apple.
Justices refused to consider Apple’s
AAPL,
appeal in the case challenging its lucrative App Store, a decision that will likely affect revenue from its App Store, which currently amounts to billions of dollars.
The high court also passed on Epic’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that Apple’s App Store policies can limit how software is distributed and paid for.
The justices gave no reasons for their decision to reject the appeals.
Shares of Apple were down 2% in early afternoon trading Tuesday.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In an X thread, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said, “The court battle to open iOS [Apple’s mobile operating system] to competing stores and payments is lost in the United States. A sad outcome for all developers.”
In 2020, Epic filed an antitrust lawsuit that accused Apple of acting as an illegal monopolist that forced consumers to get apps through its App Store and buy digital content inside an app using its own system. Apple charges up to a 30% commission for in-app purchases.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in 2021 rejected Epic’s antitrust claims against Apple. But the judge also found that in barring developers from “steering” users to make digital purchases that bypass Apple’s in-app system, Apple violated California’s unfair-competition law.
The judge’s injunction requires Apple to let app developers provide links and buttons that direct consumers to other ways to pay for digital content that they use in their apps.
