A U.S. appellate court has temporarily allowed Apple Inc to stop making any major changes in the wake of the legal battle between Epic Games and the App Store.
The decision by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals halts a September injunction requiring the tech giant to remove its App Store rule, which prohibits developers from adding in-app links to payment websites.
“Apple has demonstrated, at minimum, that its appeal raises serious questions on the merits of the district court’s determination that Epic Games failed to show Apple’s conduct violated any antitrust laws but did show that the same conduct violated California’s Unfair Competition Law,” the appellate court said.
The injunction in September was part of a larger ruling that largely sided with the iPhone maker, which led to appeals by both Apple and Epic Games.
The legal battle between the companies began in 2020 when Fortnite was removed from Apple and Google’s app stores because of the introduction of a new payment system that overrides the tech giants’ payment systems and in-app purchase commissions.
Epic Games subsequently filed antitrust lawsuits against Apple and Google in various jurisdictions. In all of these lawsuits, Epic Games has accused the tech giants of anti-competitive and monopolistic practices because of their allegedly exorbitant commission structures of 30%.