Court finds Apple, executive lied under oath in Epic Games trial

Apple willfully violated and ignored a 2021 decision that came out of the Epic Games case, judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said in a decision on Wednesday.

She wrote that Apple's Vice President of Finance Alex Roman "outright lied" to the court about when Apple had decided to levy a 27% fee on some purchases linked to its App Store.

"Neither Apple, nor its counsel, corrected the, now obvious, lies," Rogers wrote, saying that she considers Apple to "to have adopted the lies and misrepresentations to this Court."

Rogers added that she referred the matter to U.S. attorneys to investigate whether to pursue criminal contempt proceedings on both Roman and Apple.

The decision is a striking repudiation of Apple's conduct in the Epic Games trial, which concluded in 2021 and was appealed in 2023.

While Apple won the vast majority of counts in the original trial, Epic Games did win some concessions tucked inside a 180-page order: Rogers originally ordered Apple to make changes to its app store, allowing app makers to link their websites inside iPhone apps in order for customers to make purchases.

On Wednesday, Rogers accused Apple of willfully trying to violate her ruling, and held Apple in contempt.

Rogers says that it was expected under her ruling that those kind of off-app purchases would not have an Apple commission. But Apple introduced new policies in 2024 that collected a 27% commission from some of those purchases, only a slight discount from the 30% Apple usually collects from in-app purchases. Rogers said nearly every Apple decision on its app linking policies was anticompetitive.

Rogers wrote that Apple presented evidence to the court of internal deliberations about its rule that were "tailor-made for litigation," instead of Apple's actual internal discussions.

"In stark contrast to Apple's initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option," Rogers wrote. "To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath."

Rogers ordered, effective immediately, for Apple to stop imposing its commissions on purchases made for iPhone apps through web links inside an app.

"This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order," Rogers wrote.

An Apple representative did not respond to a request for comment. An Epic Games representative did not immediately have a comment.

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