Apple may face further repercussions for failing to comply with a court order that led to a contempt of court ruling last week. The class action lawsuit, filed on behalf of the developers, alleges that Apple’s actions cost Pure Sweat Basketball (and other developers) revenue during the period when it was determined that the company violated the original court order. “If Apple had complied with the injunction as requested, Pure Sweat would have been able to sell subscriptions to its app directly to its customers,” Hagens Berman argues.
The original court ruling from 2021 forced Apple to allow App Store developers to redirect users to other payment systems so that they could bypass the 30 percent of in-app payments that Apple charges. It was assumed that the App Store would stop preventing developers from including buttons or links in their apps and metadata that would allow users to make purchases outside the App Store.
However, developer Epic Games accused Apple of “maliciously enforcing” this ruling, as the company continues to charge a commission of up to 27 percent on any sales made through links to external payment systems. He also stated that Apple, among other violations, had imposed onerous restrictions on external buttons.
In her ruling last week, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said that Apple “chose the most anticompetitive option” at every turn. She even said that Apple lied under oath to hide the truth about its actions and referred the case to the US attorney for a criminal contempt investigation.
“The court ultimately ruled that Apple intentionally violated the injunction to protect its revenues and then ‘recycled’ excuses to offer to the court, often with ‘lies on the witness stand,'” the class action lawsuit says. “The evidence showed that although one of Apple’s executives [Phil Schiller] ‘advocated that Apple comply with the injunction,’ Mr. Cook ignored that advice and allowed other members of his finance team to convince him otherwise. Mr. Cook made a bad choice.”
The class action lawsuit seeks to recover lost income for 100,000 or more developers who were forced to pay Apple commissions that should not have been. In a previous class action against the App Store, Hagens Berman secured a $100 million settlement for iOS developers.
