Apple Asks Court To Halt App Store Rule Changes While It Appeals

Apple asked a judge to halt an order forcing it to give up control over App Store payments while it appeals the decision. From a report: In a filing on Wednesday, Apple says the order contains "extraordinary intrusions" that could result in "grave irreparable harm" to the company. Last week, California District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found that Apple was in "willful violation" of a 2021 injunction issued as part of the Epic Games v. Apple case.

As a result, the judge ordered Apple to stop collecting an up to 27 percent commission on purchases made outside the App Store, and said the company can no longer restrict how developers point users toward external purchases.

Why is this legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that a convicted monopolist has the authority to even ask that they not be harmed as part of punishment for the things they did wrong?

Of course it's going to hurt their business; that's the point, that's the goal, to punish them and hold them accountable for their actions.

The fact that they will have pain and be hurt as a company is the actual intention.

Its punishment. Its going to feel bad. That's intentional, otherwise the justice system has no power.

Re:

[mysidia]

has the authority to even ask that they not be harmed as part of punishment for the things they did wrong?

Because it's Civil court. The purpose of civil court in general is to compensate for damages not inflict punishments.

Sometimes punitive damages are in order, but they cannot be excessive. The US Constitution has a prohibition against excessive fines.. meaning the punishments essentially have to be the minimum necessary and not excessive.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying it's unconstitutional to actually punish a company for their crimes?

Re:

[mysidia]

So you're saying it's unconstitutional to actually punish a company for their crimes?

It's unconstitutional if it is a fine and the amount is excessive, yes.

For example a city is not able to fine someone $5000 for improper parking in a handicap spot, but a reasonable $500 fine is perfectly alright under the constitution.

In a civil case like this one; Any financial penalty is not to be grossly disproportionate to the damages actually suffered by the plaintiff who filed the lawsuit. So if the plaintiff su

Re:

[snowshovelboy]

There is no principle of proportionality for civil contempt of court. Apple should have filed this appeal when the original ruling came out instead of trying to weasel out of it.

Re:

[larryjoe]

So you're saying it's unconstitutional to actually punish a company for their crimes?

It's unconstitutional if it is a fine and the amount is excessive, yes.

For example a city is not able to fine someone $5000 for improper parking in a handicap spot, but a reasonable $500 fine is perfectly alright under the constitution.

Somehow going from $500 to $5000 crosses the threshold of cruel and unusual, and yet executing poor people passes constitutional muster. This incongruity illustrates the intrinsically murky interpretation of the Constitution and how absurd it is to bless a single interpretation based on how political winds happened to blow at one past moment.

Re: Why is this legal?

[ArmoredDragon]

Oh no, that's quite wrong. Civil courts can and do issue punitive rulings intended to deter future bad conduct. Including using punitive damages to plaintiffs. Punitive damages multiply the base damages awarded, often three times the original amount. Generally punitive damages are only awarded if the judge or jury believes the conduct was so egregious that the defendant needs to be taught a lesson, more or less.

Here we have a case of the defendant repeatedly ignoring the judge's orders, lying under oath, th

Re:

[mysidia]

Civil courts can and do issue punitive rulings intended to deter future bad conduct. Including using punitive damages to plaintiffs.

In general the defendant will have the right to any excessive amounts of punitive damages be reduced to zero at appeal. Juries will happily write a 100 billion award, but it gets reduced to 1 million in post trial motions and appeals to the higher court to correct unwarranted damages.

Punitive damages multiply the base damages awarded, often three times the original amount

Only i

Re:

[thegarbz]

Why is it that a convicted monopolist has the authority to even ask that they not be harmed as part of punishment for the things they did wrong?

What kind of a dumb take is that? Because even convicted people have a right to appeal and all appellate processes have a right to request a temporary injunction during appeal.

What is it you suggest? Take away all due process as soon as the first guilty verdict comes through? I don't care if they are fucking war criminals, everyone, and every company should have the right to ask for a review in the court.

Delay, Deny

[mspohr]

Just keep the money rolling in.

Re:Delay, Deny

[dgatwood]

Just keep the money rolling in.

Yeah. The correct answer from the judge should be, "No. Fuck you. You've been criminally overcharging consumers by taking extortionate app store fees for seventeen years while preventing competition on your platform in a severely market-distorting way. Someone finally had the brass cojones to sue you and won. You can appeal all you want to, but your odds of success on appeal are nowhere near good enough to warrant injunctive relief, because what you did is so egregious."

Not irreparable. Amend your dev agreement?

[mysidia]

Simple really.. Amend your developer agreement allowing developers to point users towards external purchases.
You can still collect just as much money from your software devs - Just do it for licensing access to your platform software development tools and environment necessary to create and publish apps; instead of payment processing services or your other businesses.

eg Add a Term to your dev contract requiring All developers submit a declaration of total amount of your businesses and affiliated compa

Re:

[dgatwood]

Simple really.. Amend your developer agreement allowing developers to point users towards external purchases. You can still collect just as much money from your software devs - Just do it for licensing access to your platform software development tools and environment necessary to create and publish apps; instead of payment processing services or your other businesses.

eg Add a Term to your dev contract requiring All developers submit a declaration of total amount of your businesses and affiliated companies' gross receipts from sales to All users of the app, and your licensing fee for the Following month of all Apples' services is set as a percentage of the declared amount.

Umm... according to the summary of the last Slashdot article, that's actually exactly what Apple tried to do, and they lied and said that they hadn't decided how much that fee should be, when in fact, they had already done so, and had specifically chosen the number to be so high that it effectively eliminated any benefit to the company from doing external payments. Their decision to play that game is, in fact, why the judge is holding them in contempt.

Re:

[dgatwood]

Simple really.. Amend your developer agreement allowing developers to point users towards external purchases. You can still collect just as much money from your software devs - Just do it for licensing access to your platform software development tools and environment necessary to create and publish apps; instead of payment processing services or your other businesses.

eg Add a Term to your dev contract requiring All developers submit a declaration of total amount of your businesses and affiliated companies' gross receipts from sales to All users of the app, and your licensing fee for the Following month of all Apples' services is set as a percentage of the declared amount.

Umm... according to the summary of the last Slashdot article, that's actually exactly what Apple tried to do, and they lied and said that they hadn't decided how much that fee should be, when in fact, they had already done so, and had specifically chosen the number to be so high that it effectively eliminated any benefit to the company from doing external payments. Their decision to play that game is, in fact, why the judge is holding them in contempt.

Oh, never mind. I understand what you meant now. You meant *retroactively* to extract revenue that was lost during the period when Apple was banned from collecting the fees. No, that would be illegal unless they put something into the user agreement now that says that they can do this if the court rules in their favor.

And even if they did, the courts will likely take a dim view of that practice, as it effectively means about 800,000 companies and app authors could have to put a large chunk of their reven

Re:

[mysidia]

they had already done so, and had specifically chosen the number to be so high that it effectively eliminated any benefit to the company from doing external payments.

Which they can do. There is no law that would require Apple to make using a 3rd party payment processor
profitable - it's just illegal for Apple to monopolize payment processing by forcing you to use Apple's payment processor and dissuade you using a different payment processors through anticompetitive methods. As an app dev they c

Re:

[snowshovelboy]

If they really wanted Apple has the full legal right to say No 3rd party developer is able to create or distribute any apps that run on iPhone going forward by closing off access to their dev tools.

On the other hand, first sale doctrine says I can install anything I want on my iphone and I don't even have to let apple know about it.

Re:

[mysidia]

first sale doctrine says I can install anything I want on my iphone and I don't even have to let apple know about it.

That's partially correct. You can attempt to run or install anything on the iPhone; It is your hardware.
And the only thing Apple can do is rely on technical security measures and legally prevent you from using their Operating System (iOS) while violating the license terms required to use/access their copyrighted system software iOS. The First Sale doctrine gives you the full r

Re:

[dgatwood]

There is no law that would require Apple to make using a 3rd party payment processor profitable - it's just illegal for Apple to monopolize payment processing by forcing you to use Apple's payment processor and dissuade you using a different payment processors through anticompetitive methods.

Ah, but charging a commission equal to the difference between a typical payment processor and their own processing fee is per se dissuading you from using a competitor with an anticompetitive method.

Please don't throw me in the briar patch!

[Surak_Prime]

If I were Apple, I might embrace this, especially as it looks legally inevitable. I mean, yes, it will hurt their bottom line in the short term, but in the long term, the logic of this legal decision will mean that phone manufacturers will each pre-install their own app store. For Apple, that's just them. For Google, that's everybody who makes Android phones. Google is about to take a huge hit on their revenues from the Google Play store *and* watch their app ecosystem splinter into a thousand pieces, many

Grave, irreparable harm?

[marcle]

Apple has been causing grave, irreparable harm to other businesses and consumers for many years, a fact which has now been established in a court of law.

Maybe it's time to even the playing field a bit.

Google And Apple are monopolists

[ConstantineXI]

And are going to lose. So shy should they be allowed a stay?

Not really surprising

[CommunityMember]

This is not really news. It would only have been news if Apple had chosen not to appeal and accepted the judgement (which was never going to happen, too much money is involved). And because so much money is involved, asking to halt the order was also to be expected. Given that the judge in this case seems to believe Apple willfully violated the previous order, I suspect the judge is not inclined to agree to the halting of the order, but there is still the ability to appeal to higher courts.