The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has obtained the time to raise its own oral debate with California in the upcoming Apple vs. Epic Games appeal case. On Friday local time, DOJ officials applied to request a 10-minute oral debate during the trial in addition to a 20-minute debate time per party. Lawyers said they hoped to have time to explain to the court the appropriate legal framework for evaluating antitrust claims against Apple.
Although DOJ's argument will technically support "either party", its intention is to clarify its current concerns about the original ruling of the lower court in the case. In a friendly brief filed on January 27, 2022, U.S. officials said there were multiple legal errors in the district court's analysis of the U.S. Antitrust Act (Sheerman Act) which could endanger effective antitrust enforcement, especially in the digital economy field.
Specifically, DOJ has concerns about all aspects of the analysis, including the lower court's too narrow interpretation of the legal part and other issues related to lower court's misunderstanding of the market and Apple's monopoly in pricing. Lawyers demanded time to state these errors to the court, and also pointed out how they would undermine antitrust enforcement if they were not corrected - not just in this case.
Before the debate on the U.S. government demands to join the legal battle, it was reported that DOJ is in the early stages of preparing for its own antitrust lawsuit against Apple. Attorneys in the U.S. government have been interviewing affected parties, including application developers of all sizes and sizes, and even hardware manufacturers like Tile. It may not want any ruling in Apple v. Epic to create a precedent in antitrust law and thus to harm its upcoming case.
In addition to the DOJ's request, the California government also requires time to make an argument in court to make its own opinion on how the court should evaluate its Consumer Protection Act, which is called the California Unfair Competition Act.
Both requests were approved based on documents submitted to the court later Friday. Among them, the US DOJ was awarded 10 minutes of debate time, and California was awarded 5 minutes. The document states that in addition to the time already allocated, Apple is granted an additional 10 minutes of debate time.
The original Apple v. Epic ruling left neither party completely satisfied, which led to both parties appealing the ruling last fall.
Although Apple largely won the lawsuit because the court ruled that the tech giant was not a monopolist, it objected to the part of the ruling that Apple must stop banning app developers from adding alternative payment links to its apps. During the appeal of the case, Apple was allowed to shelve changes to those ordered app stores. Meanwhile, Epic Games appealed the ruling because it still wanted to prove that Apple was acting in an anti-competitive manner and hoped that the court would force Apple to support alternative payments and third-party app stores.
