The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday that it will uphold the judge’s ruling in 2021, Bloomberg reports. At the time, the first verdict in the lawsuit was between Apple and Epic Games. In nine of the ten claims, the ruling favored Apple, one claim was won by Epic.
After the 2021 lawsuit, Epic has decided to appeal, which the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has now considered. In a statement, the three judges say that there is a major discussion going on about online transactions, but that it is not up to them to rule on that.
“There is a lively and important debate going on about the role that online transaction platforms with market power play in our economy and democracy. However, our job as a federal appeals court is not to resolve that debate — nor should we try to. Instead, we faithfully applied existing precedents to the facts in this decision.”
Fortnite lawsuit
The matter between Epic and Apple started in 2020, when the developer decided to add an extra way in the iOS version of Fortnite to pay for V-bucks. This bypassed the 30 percent commission for Apple, which goes against the terms of service of the App Store. In response, Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store and Epic’s developer account was deleted.
When the lawsuit was initially won by Apple in 2021, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney asked if the tech giant could add Fortnite to the App Store again. The developer would then remove the extra payment method from the game and comply with the rules from now on. Apple declined that request.
