Apple May Face Criminal Charges for Allegedly Lying to a Federal Judge

Apple “willfully chose not to comply” with a court order to loosen its app store restrictions—and one of its executives lied under oath about the company’s plans, a federal judge wrote on Wednesday. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has referred the situation to the US Attorney’s Office in San Francisco “to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.” In 2021, Gonzalez Rogers presided over a lawsuit brought by Fortnite developer Epic Games over the iPhone maker’s allegedly anticompetitive practices that hampered the ability of developers to generate revenue from the App Store. This included Apple’s policy of taking a 30 percent commission on certain in-app purchases. While Gonzalez Rogers ultimately ruled in favor of Apple on most counts, she ordered the company to begin allowing developers to market ways to make in-app purchases outside of the App Store ecosystem. Apple responded by lowering its commission to 27 percent on purchases made elsewhere, but it also int ... Read full article.