Apple may face criminal charges of claiming lying to a federal judge

Apple “Permanently chosen not compliance” for a court order to reduce the restrictions of its application stores – and one of the executives lied under the department on the company’s plans, a federal judge He wrote on Wednesday.

Judge IV Gonzalez Rogers referred the situation to the US Prosecutor’s Office in San Francisco “to investigate whether criminal contempt procedures were appropriate.”

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In 2021, Gonzalez Rogers headed On a lawsuit It was presented by Fortnite Games developer on the alleged iPhone maker Anti -competition practices This hindered the ability of developers to generate revenues from the application store. This included the Apple policy of taking a 30 percent commission on some of the purchases within the application.

While Gonzalez Rogers Ultimately For Apple in most of the charges, the company ordered to start allowing developers to market roads to make purchases inside the application outside the applications store. Apple received By reducing its commission to 27 percent of the purchases made elsewhere, but also provided a series of other changes, including showing the so -called scary screens, to discourage users from making purchases outside its environmental system.

Last year, EPIC challenged in court how Apple was responding to this, prompting Gonzalez Rogers to demand a technology giant to deliver documents that contributed to the judgment of Wednesday’s contempt.

“With an explicit intent to create new anti -competition barriers that would maintain valuable revenue streaming, in its ruling on Wednesday.” This believes that this court will tolerate such a rebellion was a serious miscalculation. “

She also said that Apple executives tried to hide the real motives of changes. “In a blatant contradiction with the initial Apple certificate within the court, contemporary business documents reveal that the Apple knew exactly what she was doing and in every turn she chose more than others FightGonzalez Rogers, a competitive option, went further than Alex Roman’s vice -president of Apple, of lying during a certificate in which he talked about how Apple reached its decision to apply for 27 percent of the purchases that were performed outside the application store.

Roman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Quoted from the Apple Documents from 2023, Gonzalez Rogers said that the head of the Apple Apple App Store Philip Schiller “called for compliance with Apple with the gossip”, but CEO Tim Cook “ignored Schiller and instead allowed the financial manager Luka Maestri and his financial team to persuade him otherwise.”

The judge demanded that Apple immediately comply with its previous order. “This is a judicial matter, not negotiations,” she wrote. “There are no implementation operations once the party intentionally ignores the court. Time is the essence. The court will not tolerate more delay. It was previously requested, Apple will not hinder competition.”

CEO of epic games, Tim Sweeny He said In X, the new ruling will put an end to “Apple Fees 15-30 % unwanted”.