Apple and Epic Games Ask Supreme Court to Decide App Store Dispute

Both Apple and Epic Games have filed petitions with the US Supreme Court asking it to review their ongoing legal battle over the App Store. The dispute centers on whether courts can order Apple to change its rules for all developers, not just Epic, and whether Apple has unlawfully restricted how developers can handle payments.

Apple filed its petition on September 28, 2023, challenging a lower court order that prevents the company from enforcing one of its payment rules against any US App Store developer. Epic filed a separate petition one day earlier, asking the Supreme Court to review whether Apple has actually broken antitrust law — the rules that prevent companies from unfairly blocking competition.

The Core Legal Question

At the heart of Apple's petition is a narrower but important procedural question: can a judge order a company to stop enforcing a policy against everyone, even people who were not part of the lawsuit?

The lower court said yes. It blocked Apple from enforcing its "anti-steering" rules — these prevent app developers from telling users about cheaper ways to pay outside the App Store — against all US developers, not just Epic. The court reasoned that this broader order was needed to fully fix the harm Epic suffered from Apple's rules.

Apple argues this goes too far. Traditionally, court orders only bind the parties directly involved in a lawsuit. Apple is pushing back against the idea that a single lawsuit can reshape its policies for thousands of developers who never participated in the case.

Epic's petition raises a different question: is Apple actually breaking antitrust law at all. This gets at whether Apple has too much control over how apps distribute and make money on iOS devices.

What Happens Next

The Supreme Court has already weighed in once. In August 2023, it rejected Epic's emergency request to make the lower court's order take effect immediately. That meant Apple could keep its current payment rules in place while the appeals process dragged on — which, in the legal system, can take months or years.

Now both companies are asking the Supreme Court to take up their cases. The Court receives thousands of petitions each year and accepts only a small fraction. The Court's decision to hear — or not hear — these cases will signal how much it wants to involve itself in App Store regulation, as opposed to leaving these issues to Congress and regulators like the Federal Trade Commission.

If the Court decides to review these petitions, final rulings would likely come during the 2024-2025 term.

Why This Matters Beyond the Courtroom

The injunction has real effects today. Thousands of App Store developers now have legal protection against Apple's anti-steering rules, even though they were not parties to the lawsuit. This is unusual and raises questions about how much one lawsuit can change an entire platform's rules.

The European Union has already moved in this direction through legislation. The Digital Markets Act now requires Apple to allow alternative app stores and payment methods in Europe. The challenge there, like it would be here, is the technical complexity: adding new payment processing, building new interfaces, and managing fraud prevention when money flows through third parties instead of Apple's tightly controlled system.

Looking at how this kind of regulation has worked before, there's a useful parallel in the Microsoft antitrust case of the late 1990s. When courts forced Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows, the technical complexity of actually separating integrated features created problems that shaped how platforms were built for years afterward. The same technical hurdles could emerge here.

The Supreme Court's eventual decision could establish a new framework for how courts handle platform disputes across technology — deciding whether the primary arbiter should be judges handling individual lawsuits, or legislatures and regulatory agencies acting at a broader scale. Both approaches have trade-offs, and the Court's choices will shape which path the country takes.