It is a real judicial “battle royale” between two colossi.
Epic Games, the publisher of the famous Fortnite game, has filed an XXL lawsuit against the giant Apple and its app store App Store for "abuse of dominant position".
The first day began Monday with violent salvos between the lawyers of the studio, who denounce the monopoly of Apple, and those of the Cupertino giant, who point to the greed of their opponent.
A case of very big under whose verdict, after three weeks of intense exchanges in a court of Oakland (California), will deeply mark the global digital economy.
The origins of the quarrel
The coup was well orchestrated. Last August, the publisher of Fortnite introduced into the game its own means of paying for weapons and accessories, thus bypassing the “in-app purchases” of the App Store, and thus depriving Apple of the 30% of commissions collected on all payments in one app. The Cupertino giant responded quickly and excluded the “battle royale” mobile game from its downloads platform. Epic Games then mobilizes its community of hundreds of millions of players around the hashtag #FreeFortnite and publishes a 60-page report that describes how Apple is abusing its situation to maintain a monopoly. Tim Cook's firm strikes back with a “breach of contract” complaint.Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has finally made an appointment with all these beautiful people in court to decide.
What are the parties claiming?
"We will prove, without ambiguity, that Apple has a monopoly," Epic lawyer Katherine Forrest said Monday, during opening remarks followed by hundreds of people by telephone.
The App Store works, according to her, as a "walled garden" where Apple has the right to set the rules for developers and third-party companies and imposes its prices.
To support her point, the lawyer read at the hearing an email from Eddy Cue, a vice president of Apple, to boss Tim Cook in 2013: “Getting our customers to use our iTunes stores, App Store and iBookstore is one of the best ways to get people hooked on the ecosystem ”.
Present on the first day of the trial, the boss of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, did not hold back his blows: "With this complaint I wanted the world to see that Apple exercises total control over access to all software. ”Via their mobile devices.
At the helm for three hours, the leader stressed that "Apple made more profit by selling the applications of the developers than the developers themselves".
Accused of not sharing enough, Apple wants to protect its nest egg: the fallout from the App Store represents 20% of its generous income.
The Californian group does not exercise more of a monopoly than a "grocery store", retorted lawyer Karen Dunn for Apple.
"Apple did not build a safe ecosystem to exclude people, it did it to invite developers," she argued.
"Everyone was happy until recently with the emergence of application stores carried by Apple and the distribution of the profit cake", analyzes Julien Pillot, teacher-researcher in digital economy at Inseec Grande École.
"But the market has reached maturity and the big players like Epic Games have the technical means to set up their own payment technologies, and they feel confused: they create the value but it is Apple who collects it".
This trial should clarify the notion of "competitive market" whose two camps claim the best model for their finances, as for other players in the digital economy.
What is at stake for the digital industry?
Without prejudging the verdict, the lawsuit agitates the Tech planet and energized opposition to the model promoted by the company co-founded by Steve Jobs. The arguments of Epic Games on the predominance of Apple are echoed in Europe where Spotify has filed a complaint for similar reasons with the European Commission. But also with a part of French Tech which is impatiently awaiting the judicial decision.
“Developers should no longer be forced to use Apple's payment system which charges them a 30% commission - with no alternative! »Denounces Benoist Grossmann, co-president of France Digitale, an association of entrepreneurs who joined the Coalition for App Fairness in a crusade against the American giant. “Many start-ups listed on the App Store are forced to accept arbitrary conditions in silence. Many are afraid of being kicked out of the platform and losing access to customers if they oppose the American giant ”.
"Small developers are clearly dependent on the Apple system for their notoriety and their income, but the heavyweights of the industry have nothing to lose and everything to gain if they manage to break the grip of this lawsuit. Apple today, and Google and its Play Store tomorrow, ”argues economist Julien Pillot.
For Apple, on the other hand, there is a lot to lose.
“An unfavorable decision could push them to have to reduce their commission, draws the expert, or, even worse for them, to allow alternative application stores on their devices, as is the case for Android.
"And recall the recent history:" Microsoft had imposed in the 2000s the possibility of installing alternative browsers to Internet Explorer, and the competition, including Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, had benefited.
"
Epic Games therefore has three weeks to prove that the company of Tim Cook, who will come to testify in person, is jeopardizing the competition law enshrined in American “antitrust” laws.