Apple referred to the Criminal Public Prosecutor for “frustration” to change the application store

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Apple was referred to a criminal prosecutor by a federal judge who found that the technology giant “thwarted” intentionally, which requires changing the rules of the application store in the United States.

The tremendous order on Wednesday, in which the judge found that one of the executives in Apple lied under the department to cover up an attempt to overcome the gangle, represents an amazing reprimand to the iPhone maker and a new development in his long legal battle with Epic games.

“apple I intentionally chose not compliance. . . The federal judge in California wrote iPhone Gonzalez Rogers:

“A grave miscalculation.” “As always, make covering up worse.”

“The court refers to the US lawyer in the northern province of California to investigate whether it is appropriate criminal contempt procedures,” she wrote, adding that Apple corresponds to the “effective effective” order and drop its new fees.

The upground order stems from epic to combat high -level monopoly presented against Apple in 2020. The iPhone manufacturer has greatly defeated the case in court and subsequent appeal.

But the company is still facing a judicial order under the California law, which requires this to change the rules that prevent developers from directing customers outside the application store, as they can avoid additional Apple fees on digital payments – up to 30 percent for some products.

The Apple App Store is an increasing part of its services, and has achieved $ 8.6 billion in global revenues in the first quarter of the year, according to Tower Sensor estimates.

Apple can appeal against the matter. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gary Bournenstein, the lawyer for the epic games, said the decision to refer the company to a criminal prosecutor in the anti -civil monopoly case was unusual. “I haven’t seen it before.”

Apple changed its bases in response to the judge’s order, which led to the creation of a mechanism to allow developers to direct consumers to make purchases outside the application, for example on the developer site. But it continued to search for a 27 percent commission on these purchases by asking the developers to report sales to the company.

Epic games claimed that this and other measures taken by Apple developers frustrated with the use of the cucumber and thus violated the pitch. Several Apple CEOs witnessed a hearing in February about their efforts to comply. A preliminary hearing was postponed in May 2024 after the judge requested more internal documents from the iPhone maker.

In her request on Wednesday, Gonzales Rogers said that Apple has cleared the compliance plan for it in order to maintain billions of dollars in revenue by creating new barriers to lock customers in the application store.

“To hide the truth, the deputy head of financial affairs, Alex Roman, explicitly lied under the oath,” the judge wrote. “Apple knows exactly what you were doing and at each turn, chose the most competitive option.”

The judge found that Phil Schiller, the chief executive of Apple, who witnessed before the judge earlier this year, had called for new fees.

But CEO Tim Cook “ignored Schiller and instead allowed the financial manager (then) Luca Maestri and his financial team to persuade him otherwise.” “Cook is bad.”

Maestri left his role as a financial manager at the beginning of this year.

Tim Sweeney, CEO of EPIC Games, said on Wednesday that the company will return it Fortnite Game to the application store next week. Apple pulled the game from the store when EPIC intentionally exceeded the payment policies in August 2020.

Apple faced similar pressure in Europe on the rules of the application store. Earlier this month, the European Union The technology group fines 500 million euros For her failure to comply with the regulations that require similarly allowing application developers to direct consumer to submit his offers.