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Apple has referred to a criminal prosecutor by a federal judge who found technology giant “demolished” her legal order to change her US application store rules.
The Judge in California ruled on Wednesday that one of Apple’s finance executives lied under an attempt to cover an attempt to bypass the order, marking a stunning reprimand for the iPhone manufacturer and a new turn in his long legal battle with epic games.
“Apple deliberately chose to disrespect. In order to express new anti-competitive barriers, which, by design and in fact, would keep an estimated income flow,” wrote federal judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.
This was “a big wrong calculation,” she wrote. “As always, cover made it worse.”
“The court refers to the US lawyers’ case for the northern California county to investigate whether criminal contempt procedures are appropriate,” she wrote, adding that Apple must respect the “effective” order and remove its new tariffs.
An Apple spokesman said: “We do not strongly agree with the decision. We will respect the court order and appeal.”
The order stems from a high -profile lawsuit lawsuit, epic games filed against Apple in 2020. The iPhone manufacturer mainly overcomes the case in court and in subsequent complaints.
But the company still faced an order under the law of California, demanding that it change rules that prevent developers from running customers outside the app store, where they can avoid Apple’s addition for digital payments – up to 30 percent for some products.
The App Store is an increasing part of the business of its services, and generated $ 8.6 billion globally in the first quarter of the year, according to sensor Tower estimates.
The decision to refer to a company to a criminal prosecutor in a civil case antitrust was unusual, said Gary Bornstein, a lawyer for epic games. “I’ve never seen it before.”
Apple changed its rules in response to the judge’s order, creating a mechanism to allow developers to direct consumers to make out of app, for example on the developer’s website. But she continued to require a 27 percent commission for those purchases asking developers to report sales to the company.
EPIC games claimed this and other measures that Apple took on developers discouraged from the use of the option and therefore violated the order. Some Apple executives testified at a February hearing for their efforts to agree. An initial hearing in May 2024 was postponed after the judge requested more internal documents from the iPhone manufacturer.
In her Wednesday’s order, Gonzalez Rogers said Apple had withdrawn its compliance plan in order to maintain a multi -billion dollar income, creating new obstacles to block customers in its app store.
“To hide the truth, Vice President of Finance, Alex Roman, fully lied under oath,” the judge wrote. Documents discovered during the case revealed that “Apple knew exactly what he was doing and at every step he chose the most counter-competitive option”.
Phil Schiller, a senior Apple executive who testified to the judge earlier this year, had defended against Apple by introducing new tariffs, the judge revealed.
But the chief executive Tim Cook “ignored Schiller and instead allowed (then) leading financial official Luca Maestri and his finance team to persuade him otherwise,” the judge found. “Cook chose poorly.”
Maestri left his role as CFO earlier this year.
Tim Sweeney, Epic Games CEO, Wednesday said the company will return its popular Fortnite Game in app store next week. Apple withdrew the game from the store when EPIC intentionally bypassing its payment policies in August 2020.
Apple has faced similar pressure in Europe on its App Store rules. Earlier this month, the EU fines the € 500 million technology group to disrespect the regulations that similarly requires it to allow applications to run consumers to offer its platform.
