{"id":27463,"date":"2025-05-09T09:01:51","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T09:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=27463"},"modified":"2025-05-09T09:29:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T09:29:37","slug":"how-apple-created-a-legal-mess-when-it-skirted-judges-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=27463","title":{"rendered":"How Apple Created a Legal Mess When It Skirted Judge\u2019s Ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Court documents show the company commissioned a sham report and lied on the stand to justify its actions, which will cast a shadow over future lawsuits.<\/p>\n

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Several weeks after a federal appeals court said Apple would have to loosen its grip on its App Store, Tim Cook, the company\u2019s chief executive, and his top lieutenants debated what to do.<\/p>\n

For more than a decade, Apple had required apps to use the App Store payment system and collected a 30 percent commission on app sales. Now, in 2023, the courts were ordering it to allow apps to avoid Apple\u2019s payments and go directly to online consumers. Mr. Cook wanted to know: Could Apple still charge a commission on those sales without violating a court order?<\/p>\n

Phil Schiller, who oversaw the App Store, worried that new fees could be illegal. He favored making online sales free of an Apple commission. Luca Maestri, who oversaw the company\u2019s finances, disagreed. He favored charging a commission of 27 percent for online sales because it would protect the company\u2019s business.<\/p>\n

Mr. Cook sided with Mr. Maestri, and Apple set out to justify that choice. It \u201cmanufactured\u201d an independent economic study to legitimize its decision, a federal judge said in an angry ruling last week. It withheld thousands of documents under attorney-client privilege claims. And at least one of its executives lied on the witness stand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The judge\u2019s ruling, as well as witness testimony this year and company documents released on Thursday, shows the extraordinary measures that Apple took to keep every penny it collected in the App Store. The decision by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who heard the initial lawsuit brought by the video game company Epic Games in 2020, could cast a shadow over Apple\u2019s business for years, weakening its credibility as legal scrutiny of its operations intensifies.<\/p>\n

The company is also trying to fend off a half dozen other legal challenges, including a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit<\/a> accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly, class action lawsuits<\/a> from app developers in the United States and anticompetitive investigations of its App Store by the European Union<\/a>, Britain<\/a>, Spain<\/a> and potentially China<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Court documents show the company commissioned a sham report and lied on the stand to justify its actions, which will cast a shadow over future lawsuits.Several weeks after a federal appeals court said Apple would have to loosen its grip on its App Store, Tim Cook, the company\u2019s chief executive, and his top lieutenants debated what to do.For more than a decade, Apple had required apps to use the App Store payment system and collected a 30 percent commission on app sales. Now, in 2023, the courts were ordering it to allow apps to avoid Apple\u2019s payments and go directly to online consumers. Mr. Cook wanted to know: Could Apple still charge a commission on those sales without violating a court order?Phil Schiller, who oversaw the App Store, worried that new fees could be illegal. He favored making online sales free of an Apple commission. Luca Maestri, who oversaw the company\u2019s finances, disagreed. He favored charging a commission of 27 percent for online sales because it would protect the company\u2019s business.Mr. Cook sided with Mr. Maestri, and Apple set out to justify that choice. It \u201cmanufactured\u201d an independent economic study to legitimize its decision, a federal judge said in an angry ruling last week. It withheld thousands of documents under attorney-client privilege claims. And at least one of its executives lied on the witness stand.The judge\u2019s ruling, as well as witness testimony this year and company documents released on Thursday, shows the extraordinary measures that Apple took to keep every penny it collected in the App Store. The decision by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who heard the initial lawsuit brought by the video game company Epic Games in 2020, could cast a shadow over Apple\u2019s business for years, weakening its credibility as legal scrutiny of its operations intensifies.The company is also trying to fend off a half dozen other legal challenges, including a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly, class action lawsuits from app developers in the United States and anticompetitive investigations of its App Store by the European Union, Britain, Spain and potentially China.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27465,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27463"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27466,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27463\/revisions\/27466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}