Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California is presiding over an antitrust lawsuit between Apple and Epic Games, maker of the video game Fortnite. The judge repeatedly slammed Epic on Monday on its legal theories and tactics in the company’s case against the Apple’s App Store.
She did not give a timeframe for a decision on the injunction. She also said that given her schedule, the case is not likely to go to trial until July 2021. And, she added, she would prefer the case be tried before a jury.
Judge Gonzalez Rogers looked skeptically at many of Epic’s claims, explicitly telling the company several times in the hearing she was not persuaded by its arguments or its strategy.
Epic knew that it was breaching its contract with Apple when it published the update, but did it anyway, she said, accusing the company of dishonesty… “You did something, you lied about it by omission, by not being forthcoming. That’s the security issue. That’s the security issue!” Gonzalez Rogers told Epic. “There are a lot of people in the public who consider you guys heroes for what you guys did, but it’s still not honest.”
[Epic] cited Apple’s in-app payment system as an example of illegal tying — when a company bundles two products together for anti-competitive gain.
But there is no tying going on with Apple’s in-app payment system, Gonzalez Rogers observed. “I’m not particularly persuaded,” she said of the in-app payment mechanism. “I just don’t see this as a separate and distinct product.”Nor did the judge buy Epic’s argument that Apple has harmed the distribution of Fortnite because of Apple’s exclusive control of the iOS App Store… “Walled gardens have existed for decades,” she said. “Nintendo has had a walled garden. Sony has had a walled garden. Microsoft has had a walled garden. What Apple’s doing is not much different… It’s hard to ignore the economics of the industry, which is what you’re asking me to do.”
MacDailyNews Take: Epic games, indeed.
When the judge is calling you a liar and throwing out your arguments left and right, you don’t have a case.
The reason for this sham is that Fortnite was dying because it was a passing fad and Epic was on the slide down, desperate to boost their biggest moneymaker in whatever way possible. One dead giveaway: Epic’s big “protest” video (“1984” parody) was ready to go immediately.
The epic whiners at Epic Games want all of the benefits afforded to them by Apple’s App Store for free. How much did it cost developers to have their applications burned onto CDs, boxed, shipped, and displayed on store shelves prior to Apple remaking the world for the better for umpteenth time?