The US Federal Court recognized that Apple violated the antitrust ruling of 2021, which obliged to provide the possibility of using alternative payment systems in the App Store. The company must now stop charging fees for transactions outside of its app store. About this informs Bloomberg.
The judge supported the position of the developer of the Fortnite game, which stated that Apple did not comply with the terms of the previous decision. The case has also been referred to federal prosecutors to consider the possibility of criminal contempt of court charges against the company.
The ruling states that Apple knowingly violated the ban by intending to create new barriers to competition in order to maintain a lucrative revenue stream that had already been found by the court to be anti-competitive.
After the 2021 ruling, Apple was supposed to allow developers to avoid paying up to a 30% commission by giving them the right to use third-party payment systems. However, the company implemented a requirement for a 27% commission on revenue generated outside the App Store, even when payments were made through external sites.
We will remind that in March, the French antimonopoly regulator fined Apple €150 million for abusing its dominant position in the field of mobile advertising in the period from 2021 to 2023. The reason was control over user tracking through the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature.
