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

Apple “willfully chose not to comply” with a tribunal bid to loosen its app store restrictions—and 1 of its executives lied nether oath astir the company’s plans, a national justice wrote connected Wednesday.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has referred the concern to the US attorney’s bureau successful San Francisco “to analyse whether transgression contempt proceedings are appropriate.”

Apple did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

In 2021, Gonzalez Rogers presided implicit a suit brought by Fortnite developer Epic Games implicit the iPhone maker’s allegedly anticompetitive practices that hampered developers’ quality to make gross from the App Store. This included Apple’s argumentation of taking a 30 percent committee connected definite in-app purchases.

While Gonzalez Rogers yet ruled successful favour of Apple connected astir counts, she ordered the institution to statesman allowing developers to marketplace ways to marque in-app purchases extracurricular of the App Store ecosystem. Apple responded by lowering its committee to 27 percent connected purchases made elsewhere, but it besides introduced a bid of different changes, including showing alleged scare screens, to dissuade users from making purchases extracurricular its ecosystem.

Last year, Epic challenged successful tribunal however Apple was responding to the order, starring Gonzalez Rogers to necessitate the tech elephantine to crook implicit documents that contributed to Wednesday's contempt ruling.

Apple pursued its non-compliance strategy “with the explicit intent to make caller anticompetitive barriers which would, by plan and successful effect, support a valued gross stream; a gross watercourse antecedently recovered to beryllium anticompetitive,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote successful her ruling connected Wednesday. “That it thought this tribunal would tolerate specified insubordination was a gross miscalculation.”

She besides said that Apple executives tried to fell the existent motivations for the changes. “In stark opposition to Apple’s archetypal in-court testimony, contemporaneous concern documents uncover that Apple knew precisely what it was doing and astatine each crook chose the astir anticompetitive option,” Gonzalez Rogers said. She went arsenic acold arsenic accusing Alex Roman, a vice president of concern astatine Apple, of lying during grounds successful which helium talked astir however Apple came to its determination to spell with a 27 percent committee connected purchases made extracurricular the App Store. “The grounds of Mr. Roman was replete with misdirection and outright lies,” the justice said.

Roman did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

Citing interior Apple documents from 2023, Gonzalez Rogers said Apple’s App Store main Phillip Schiller “had advocated that Apple comply with the injunction” but that CEO Tim Cook “ignored Schiller and alternatively allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his concern squad to person him otherwise.”

The justice demanded that Apple instantly comply with her earlier order. “This is an injunction, not a negotiation,” she wrote. “There are nary do-overs erstwhile a enactment willfully disregards a tribunal order. Time is of the essence. The Court volition not tolerate further delays. As antecedently ordered, Apple volition not impede competition.”

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said connected X the caller ruling would bring an extremity to “Apple’s 15-30% junk fees."