US District Judge, Yuvan Gonzalez Rogers today ruled that, immediately starting, Apple is no longer allowed to impose taxes on external payment links within the app store titles, nor can it ban how they appear inside apps.
The decision came from a long -standing Apple vs. Epic Games legal dispute, which has been going on for four years. While the ruling was in favor of Apple before, the latest one success is not only a victory for epic, but all developers are willing to divide their apps into the USIOS App Store and they do not want to pay Apple to use their payment system.
As part of this latest decision, Apple can no longer impose a commission or a fee on the purchase that users make out of an app. It cannot be banned from developers’ style, formatting, or location of links links of purchases out of an app, nor can it stop or limit the use of buttons or other calls. Apple cannot even interfere with the selection of users to leave any app out of a neutral message to inform users that they are going to a third party site.
It did not help Apple’s case that the company’s VP of Finance, Alex Roman, was found lying under the oath, and the company’s CEO, Tim Cook, denied the original court decision, despite Apple’s colleague Phil Schilller, despite the second proposal.
Responding to the decision, Apple said, “We strictly disagree with the decision. We will comply with the court order and we will appeal.”
In fact, Apple needs to distribute its apps through its App Store to force all users to use Apple’s own payment systems for any purchase inside the app. As with the purchase of the app itself, any app purchase was also taxed 30 % of the total amount of purchase, which Apple had taken from the pocket. The developers were prevented from keeping links from the external shopping pages inside their apps or pointing to such pages, and when a ruler later prevented the company from doing it, whenever the user tried to click on an external payment link, it resorted to frightening tactics. And even external payment was targeted by 27 % tax.
Epic-and Spotifies, which have resisted their runs on similar issues with Apple-have issued statements that they are happy with the decision and will immediately update their apps.
