Epic Counterclaims, Europe, and Valve
Florian Mueller (also: AppleInsider, ArsTechnica, Hacker News):
Epic Games just reduced the potential risk it incurs from its antitrust dispute with Apple over its App Store business terms: Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted an Epic motion for judgment on the pleadings on some of Apple’s counterclaims. As a result, Apple’s counterclaims (unless an appeals court revives the ones the judge just threw out) are limited to breach of contract, which Epic already acknowledged in October it would be liable for should it lose its antitrust case against Apple.
Tim Hardwick (also: Florian Mueller, Reuters, Hacker News):
Epic Games has filed an antitrust complaint against Apple in the European Union, broadening its legal battle against the tech giant by attempting to appeal to the EU’s differing interpretation of antitrust issues compared to those in the United States (via The Wall Street Journal).
[…]
Europe uses different standards than the U.S. when it comes to antitrust issues, focusing more on fairness between competitors than their impact on consumers, which the U.S tends to focus on. Epic has also filed similar lawsuits in Australia and the U.K., accusing Apple of an abuse of dominance.
Epic Games will not be able to expand its ongoing Fortnite fight with Apple in the UK after a judge said the case could not continue in London, reports Bloomberg.
[…]
The judge ruled that Epic Games’ case against Apple Inc. was better decided in the United States, but Epic Games is allowed to sue Apple (UK) Limited, a European arm of the company, and Google.
Apple has subpoenaed Valve in its ongoing lawsuit with Epic Games, demanding it provides huge amounts of commercial data about Steam sales and operations dating back several years, court filings have revealed (via PC Gamer).
[…]
Apple requested that Valve provided documents to show its total yearly sales of apps and in-app products, annual advertising revenues, annual sales of external products, and annual revenues and earnings from Steam. There are also more granular requests for the name of every app on Steam, the date range when every app has been available, and the price of all apps and in-app purchases.
[…]
The company also bristled at Apple’s request for Valve’s involvement in the case since Steam is not a competitor in the mobile space, saying “Valve is not Epic, and Fortnite is not available on Steam.” Valve goes as far as to allege that Apple is using the request as a shortcut to a vast amount of commercially-sensitive third-party data.
Well, I guess now I’ll subpoena Apple and demand they release all their sales data for each app in the App Store.
The irony being they don’t retain that data for developers’ own sales on the App Store
Previously:
