Key Points:
- Apple petitioned the US Supreme Court on Thursday to overturn a civil contempt ruling.
- The legal battle began in 2020 when Epic Games sued Apple over its tight monopoly on App Store purchases.
- A judge held Apple in contempt in 2025 for charging a 27% fee on purchases made outside the App Store.
- Apple argues that the court’s original injunction should not apply to millions of other app developers.
Apple escalated its long-running legal battle with Epic Games on Thursday by appealing to the highest court in the United States. The technology giant officially asked the US Supreme Court to review a lower court decision that held the iPhone maker in civil contempt. This high-profile dispute stems from the controversial fees Apple charges developers who guide customers to purchase digital goods outside its official App Store.
The legal war between the two companies started in 2020 when Epic Games, the creator of the wildly popular video game “Fortnite,” filed a massive antitrust lawsuit against Apple. Epic Games aimed to shatter Apple’s complete control over software distribution and in-app payments on iOS. At the heart of the argument sat Apple’s standard commission, which took a whopping 30% cut of almost all digital transactions made within downloaded apps.
In 2021, a federal judge mostly dismissed Epic’s antitrust claims, ruling that Apple was not an illegal monopolist. However, the judge issued a permanent injunction that forced Apple to eliminate its anti-steering rules. This court order required Apple to allow developers to include external links in their apps. These links would direct users to alternative, non-Apple payment methods through which developers would not have to pay the standard 30% fee.
While Apple technically complied with the court order by allowing developers to post these external links, the company quickly built a new financial barrier. Apple adopted a new set of guidelines that charged developers a 27% commission on purchases made on external systems within 7 days of a user clicking an in-app link. App developers expressed outrage, noting that the new fee barely differed from the original 30% commission.
Epic Games fought back immediately, arguing that the new 27% fee mocked the entire purpose of the 2021 injunction. After reviewing the arguments, a federal judge sided with the game developer. In 2025, the judge officially found Apple in civil contempt for violating the court’s order, ruling that the tech giant had deliberately bypassed the spirit of the law to protect its massive revenues.
In its petition to the Supreme Court on Thursday, Apple’s legal team presented two major arguments to the justices. First, they argued that the original injunction should not apply to millions of other developers worldwide. Since Epic Games acted as the sole plaintiff in the lawsuit and the case was not a certified class action, Apple believes the court had no authority to mandate changes that would benefit the entire industry.
Second, Apple contends that courts cannot hold a company in contempt for violating the unwritten spirit of an injunction. The company argued that the original 2021 order did not explicitly ban them from charging a different commission on external web-based purchases. They believe the lower courts punished them for a rule that was never clearly defined or written into the law.
This legal battle carries massive financial consequences for Apple’s services division, which generates more than $85 billion in yearly revenue. The App Store serves as a primary profit engine for the company, and any threat to its commission structure could seriously dent Apple’s bottom line. Investors closely monitor the case because a defeat for Apple could force a massive restructuring of its digital business model.
In December, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the civil contempt finding against Apple. However, the appeals court offered the iPhone maker a small silver lining. The judges ruled that Apple could return to the trial court to argue exactly what commission rate it should legally be allowed to charge for digital transactions originating on iOS but paid for using third-party systems.
Apple continues to deny all allegations of wrongdoing, asserting that its fees help pay for the security and intellectual property of the iOS ecosystem. Meanwhile, Epic Games did not immediately respond to media requests for comment following Apple’s Supreme Court filing. The justices will decide in the coming months whether they will take up this landmark case, which could permanently reshape the global app economy.
