Apple and Executive Found Deceitful in Epic Games Court Case

A U.S. court has found Apple, along with one of its executives, guilty of misleading the court intentionally, ignoring a previous court mandate from the 2021 Epic Games lawsuit, as Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers revealed on Wednesday.

The judge criticized Apple's Vice President of Finance, Alex Roman, for blatantly lying about the timing of Apple's decision to implement a 27% fee related to App Store transactions.

Judge Gonzalez Rogers stated that neither Apple nor its legal team corrected these evident falsehoods, indicating that Apple effectively embraced the dishonesty before the court.

She further recommended that the U.S. legal authorities consider criminal contempt charges against both Roman and Apple.

This judgment delivers a significant rebuke to Apple's handling of matters during the Epic Games litigation, which concluded in 2021 and faced an appeal in 2023.

Although Apple succeeded in most of the original trial's counts, Judge Rogers had directed Apple to allow app developers more freedom to provide links to alternative payment methods.

The judge expressed that Apple's actions were a deliberate defiance of her orders, levying contempt charges against the company.

Judge Rogers highlighted that her ruling anticipated no Apple fees on certain external transactions. Yet, in 2024, Apple instated policies to collect 27% fees on these purchases, a slight reduction from the typical 30% for in-app transactions, which she found largely anticompetitive.

The court was presented with stylized evidence from Apple that masked their true internal strategies during legal proceedings.

The judge underlined a stark difference between Apple's courtroom declarations and their actual business maneuvers, citing a deliberate misleading of the truth by Apple’s Vice-President of Finance.

Furthermore, Judge Rogers accused Apple of not disclosing documentation related to a June 2023 meeting with CEO Tim Cook about obeying the 2021 court directive, and supposedly concealed this until 2025.

Apple reportedly exploited privileged limits to refrain from document sharing.

Rogers mandated an immediate cessation of Apple's collection fees on purchases made via web links within apps on iPhones.

The judge asserted the decision as a binding decree, not open for renegotiation, stating that once a court order is deliberately bypassed, there are no second chances.

Neither Apple nor Epic Games provided comments in response to inquiries about the judgment.