Getty Images
Epic Games, the private company behind the massively popular video game Fortnite, will take on the world s most valuable company in court Monday.
In
Epic Games v.
Apple, Silicon Valley s highest-stakes court case in a decade, the Cary, North Carolina-based game maker will argue that Apple unfairly uses it dominance to lock developers into using its App Store, which it says takes too hefty a slice of their profits.
Epic will attempt to make the case that the App Store represents an illegal use of Apple s market power. Even if Apple is a legal monopoly, according to the antitrust complaint Epic filed in August, the company is using its power to dominate a secondary market: app distribution. Third-party developers are dependent on the App Store for customer transactions on more than one billion iPhones, and Apple charges them up to 30 percent of every purchase, which Epic s complaint says is 10 times what other systems, such as Nintendo or Xbox, charge on ave
San Francisco
Epic Games faces an uphill legal battle against Apple in an antitrust trial starting Monday, and a defeat for the maker of Fortnite could make it harder for United States government regulators to pursue a similar case against the iPhone maker, legal experts said.
But win or lose at the trial, Epic, which has pursued an aggressive public relations campaign against Apple alongside its court pleadings, may have already accomplished a major goal: Drawing Apple squarely into the global debate over whether and how massive technology companies should be regulated.
Apple has mostly succeeded in staying out of the regulatory crosshairs by arguing that the iPhone is a niche product in a smartphone world dominated by Google’s Android operating system. But that argument has become harder to sustain with the number of iPhone users now exceeding 1 billion.
BusinessWorld
May 3, 2021 | 1:39 pm
Image via Fortnite/YouTube
SAN FRANCISCO Epic Games faces an uphill legal battle against Apple Inc. in an antitrust trial starting Monday, and a defeat for the maker of
Fortnite could make it harder for US government regulators to pursue a similar case against the iPhone maker, legal experts said.
But win or lose at the trial, Epic, which has pursued an aggressive public relations campaign against Apple alongside its court pleadings, may have already accomplished a major goal: Drawing Apple squarely into the global debate over whether and how massive technology companies should be regulated.
Apple has mostly succeeded in staying out of the regulatory crosshairs by arguing that the iPhone is a niche product in a smartphone world dominated by Google’s Android operating system. But that argument has become harder to sustain with the number of iPhone users now exceeding 1 billion.
In Apple versus Epic Games, courtroom battle is only half the fight bdnews24.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bdnews24.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By Stephen Nellis on May 3, 2021 6:35AM
Could make it harder for regulators to take action.
Epic Games faces an uphill legal battle against Apple in an antitrust trial starting in the US this week, and a defeat for the maker of Fortnite could make it harder for US government regulators to pursue a similar case against the iPhone maker, legal experts said.
But win or lose at the trial, Epic, which has pursued an aggressive public relations campaign against Apple alongside its court pleadings, may have already accomplished a major goal: drawing Apple squarely into the global debate over whether and how massive technology companies should be regulated.