A federal judge has referred Apple to a criminal prosecutor and found the tech giant deliberately "foiled" her legal order to change app store rules in the United States.
A stern order on Wednesday, the judge found that one of Apple's finance executives swore an attempt to bypass the ban, a condemnation of iPhone makers marked a stunning condemnation and took a new twist in a long legal battle with Epic Games.
"Apple deliberately chose not to comply with … explicitly intends to create new anti-competitive barriers that will be designed and effectively maintain a valuable source of revenue," wrote Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, a federal judge in California.
It was “a serious miscalculation,” she wrote. “As usual, the cover-up makes the situation worse.”
"The court referred the matter to the U.S. attorney in the Northern California area to investigate whether the criminal temp depends on the appropriateness of the lawsuit," she wrote.
The ban stems from the high-profile antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple in 2020, Epic Games. The iPhone maker largely beat the case in court and subsequent appeals.
However, the company still faces a ban from California law requiring it to change rules to prevent developers from driving customers outside the app store, where they can avoid Apple's surcharges on digital payments — up to 30% for some products.
According to Sensor Tower estimates, Apple's App Store is an increasingly part of its services business, raising $8.6 billion in global revenue in the first quarter of the year.
Apple can appeal the order. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Epic Games attorney Gary Bornstein said the decision to refer a company to a criminal prosecutor in a civil antitrust case was unusual. “I’ve never seen it before.”
Apple changed the rules based on a judge's injunction, creating a mechanism that allows developers to guide consumers to make purchases outside of the app, such as on the developer's website. However, by asking developers to report sales to Apple, it continues to seek a 27% commission for these purchases.
Epic Games claims Apple has violated the ban by preventing developers from using the option. Several Apple executives testified at a February hearing to comply. The first hearing was held in May 2024 after a judge asked the iPhone maker to provide more internal documents.
Gonzalez Rogers said in a Wednesday order that Apple has developed a compliance plan to lock customers into its App Store by creating new barriers to maintain a multibillion-dollar revenue stream.
"To cover up the truth, finance vice president Alex Roman was sworn in." Documents found during the case show that "Apple knows exactly what it is doing and chooses the most anti-competitive option in each round".
The judge found that Apple's senior director, Phil Schiller, who testified before the judge earlier this year, advocated that Apple propose new fees.
But CEO Tim Cook "ignored Schiller and instead allowed (at the time) Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise he said. " "Cook's bad choice."
Maestri left the chief financial officer early this year.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said Wednesday the company will return to its popular Fortnite Next week, the game will be available on the App Store. Apple pulled the game from the store when Epic deliberately bypassed its payment policy in August 2020.
Apple faces similar pressure on its App Store rules. Earlier this month, the EU fined 500 million euros of tech groups for not complying with regulations that require it to allow application developers to guide consumers to provide their platforms.