The Court does not find that it is impossible only that Epic Games failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal monopolist," Judge Rogers further added. The final trial record did not include evidence of other critical factors, such as barriers to entry and conduct decreasing output or decreasing innovation in the relevant market. "While the Court finds that Apple enjoys considerable market share of over 55% and extraordinarily high profit margins, these factors alone do not show antitrust conduct. ![]() Those claims have been quashed, though, as Judge Rogers said that "Given the trial record, the Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws." This allowed Epic Games to avoid paying a 30% commission to Apple on all in-app purchases.Įpic sued Apple after Fortnite's removal from the App Store, claiming the tech giant's actions were monopolistic and violated the US antitrust law. The legal battle between the two companies started last year after Apple removed Epic Games' Fortnite from its App Store, citing violation of its policies as the reason since the video game publisher by-passed the Cupertino-based tech giant's in-app payments platform by introducing an alternative, direct payment method inside the game. sdk.environment=production sdk.charset=UTF-8 api.endpoint= sdk.account=f00000000166018 sdk.connectTimeout=500 sdk.socketTimeout=500 sdk.crawlerConnectTimeout=750 sdk.crawlerSocketTimeout=750 =ixf flat.file=true sdk.proxyPort=0 sdk.proxyProtocol=http eragents=google|bingbot|msnbot|slurp|duckduckbot|baiduspider|yandexbot|sogou|exabot|facebot|ia_archiver Games and Apple were engaged in a legal battle since last August after the former sued the latter for its anti-competitive and monopolistic practices, and Apple has emerged as the winner of the case after the United States District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers handed a 185-page ruling on the lawsuit.Analysis Group Expert Cited in Apple’s.Apple prevailed on all of Epic’s antitrust claims, Judge Gonzalez Rogers ruling for Epic only on a single count of violating California law as applied to developers’ ability to communicate with consumers. Further citing Professor Schmalensee’s testimony at multiple points, she rejected all of Epic’s central challenges and validated Apple’s business model. He also rebutted the testimony of Epic’s experts.Ĭiting Professor Schmalensee’s testimony, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the US District Court for the Northern District of California found that the App Store is a two-sided transaction platform. ![]() Professor Schmalensee opined on issues of market definition, market power, and the economics of two-sided platforms like those identified by the US Supreme Court in Ohio v. ![]() Specifically, Epic alleged that Apple has a monopoly over both distribution and payment collection for the apps on its App Store.Īn Analysis Group team led by Managing Principal Samuel Weglein and Vice President Kristof Zetenyi, and including Managers Solvejg Wewel and Big Banternghansa, supported academic affiliate Richard Schmalensee, who filed expert reports and testified at deposition and trial. Epic claimed that Apple’s App Store policies violate both federal and state antitrust law and California’s unfair competition law. Analysis Group was retained on behalf of Apple in a high-profile antitrust suit brought by the game developer Epic Games (Epic), creator of the popular game Fortnite.
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