Epic Games and Apple are in court for evidentiary hearings for the next couple of weeks over whether Apple violated the anti-steering injunction set down by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in 2021 after their landmark trial.
The judge in Epic v. Apple thinks Apple’s being shady about buttons and links
‘Other than to stifle competition, I see no other answer. Can you give me one?’
‘Other than to stifle competition, I see no other answer. Can you give me one?’
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
is a reporter who writes about law, technology, speech, and democracy. A journalist trained as a lawyer, she has been writing about tech for 10 years.
These hearings are going to be a lot of nitty-gritty details about App Store guidelines. Today, for example, involves a lot of questioning about buttons. (Apple restricts button styles for links that go outside of their in-app payment system.)
But this interjection, from Judge Rogers, doesn’t look good for Apple:
I can’t imagine a logical reason why Apple would demand that of competitor apps. What’s a logical competitive reason, not for suggesting it, but demanding it? ... Other than to stifle competition, I see no other answer. Can you give me one?
Nobody wants to opine on how a judge is going to rule — especially not based on a stray comment in an evidentiary hearing — but oof.
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Sean Hollister and Jess Weatherbed
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