GoKawiilThe US Supreme Court rejected Apple’s request today that would have temporarily paused the Epic Games case from returning to the District Court for proceedings that are set to calculate how much commission it can charge for off-App Store transactions. Here are the details.
A bit of context
Earlier this week, Apple filed an application with the Supreme Court seeking a stay of the Ninth Circuit’s mandate that sends the Epic Games case back to the District Court.
In its filing, Apple argued that in 2025, it was wrongly found in contempt of a 2021 injunction related to off-App Store purchases. At the time, Apple was charging a 27% commission on off-App Store purchases, since the court’s 2021 decision did not specify whether Apple could charge such commissions.
From the ruling, as Apple pointed out in its request to the Supreme Court:
Apple Inc. and its officers, agents, servants, employees, and any person in active concert or participation with them (“Apple”), are hereby permanently restrained and enjoined from prohibiting developers from (i) including in their apps and their metadata buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to In-App Purchasing and (ii) communicating with customers through points of contact obtained voluntarily from customers through account registration within the app.
When Apple took the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the court found that Apple was allowed to charge a commission, leaving it to the District Court to determine the amount.
That led to this week’s application, where Apple asked the Supreme Court to stay the case from going back to the District Court, based on arguments including:
The contempt designation is undeserved, because the 2021 injunction didn’t mention anything about App Store fees;
Having this undue contempt designation in the record is unfairly hurting its position in the remand proceedings;
... continue reading