Epic Games CEO mulls ‘next steps’ in legal fight with Apple despite losing appeal

CARY – Apple has declared a “resound victory” over Cary-based Epic Games in their antitrust legal battle when a federal appeals court upheld a lower court victory for the tech giant. But Epic CEO Tim Sweeney hasn’t surrendered.

“Apple prevailed at the 9th Circuit Court. Though the court upheld the ruling that Apple’s restraints have ‘a substantial anticompetitive effect that harms consumers’, they found we didn’t prove our Sherman [antitrust] Act case,” Sweeney tweeted Monday afternoon following the news of the court’s 2-1 ruling.

“Fortunately, the court’s positive decision rejecting Apple’s anti-steering provisions frees iOS developers to send consumers to the web to do business with them directly there. We’re working on next steps.”

Whether Apple concedes in this case or not, Epic is still fighting Google over antitrust issues in the U.S. with a trial coming in November. Epic also challenged Apple in the U.K. [it lost] and European Union. A similar lawsuit is proceeding in Australia.

The decision in the case involving Epic Games, maker of the hit video game “Fortnite,” upholds a lower court ruling that found Apple is not a monopolist in the distribution of iOS apps, and that Apple did not violate antitrust laws by requiring app developers to use Apple’s proprietary in-app payment systems.

In reaching its conclusion, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said Epic Games failed to show how Apple could have implemented “alternative means for Apple to accomplish the procompetitive justifications supporting iOS’s walled garden ecosystem.”

Apple grounds its app store restrictions in security and privacy rationales that differentiate the company from other mobile operating system makers such as Google, the court said, creating “a heterogenous market for app-transaction platforms which, as a result, increases interbrand competition” between iOS and Android.