About a week ago, Apple filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to seek an injunction to stop the implementation of App Store changes ordered by Judge Rogers in the Epic Games case. The company today was granted a temporary stay on the district court’s ruling allowing the App Store payment guidelines to remain unchanged until the appeals court can fully hear the case.
Apple granted a stay on Epic vs. Apple ruling, App Store payment methods can remain unchanged
On December 2, Apple asked the Ninth Circuit to grant it “administrative stay” to halt the reconfiguration process of its digital marketplace. Without a stay, Apple claimed, “the App Store will have to be reconfigured – to the detriment of consumers, developers, and Apple itself.”
The U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is allowing Apple the time it asked for its make its arguments in its appeal. If the stay had been denied, the tech giant would have had to allow app developers to display links to external payment platforms on its platform from December 9.
“Apple has demonstrated, at minimum, that its appeal raises serious questions on the merits of the district court’s determination that Epic Games, Inc. failed to show Apple’s conduct violated any antitrust laws but did show that the same conduct violated California’s Unfair Competition Law,” the judge ruled. “Therefore, we grant Apple’s motion to stay part (i) of paragraph (1) of the permanent injunction. The stay will remain in effect until the mandate issues in this appeal.”
The stay does not affect the earlier ruling but puts changes on hold until the appeals process is complete, a process that will likely span over months. However, the court’s order to the company to allow “communicating with customers through points of contact obtained voluntarily from customers through account registration within the app,” will remain unaffected by the stay.
While Apple was not declared a monopoly by U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez In the case of Epic Games v. Apple, the judge did issue a decision barring the Cupertino tech giant from forcing developers to use its In-App Purchase system.
