Apple Takes Epic Games Fight to Supreme Court

In its long-running battle with Epic Games, Apple has filed a formal request asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review lower court rulings that found the tech giant in civil contempt and altered its App Store rules (via 9to5Mac).

The submission marks the latest escalation in a legal feud that began in 2020 when Epic Games sought to bypass Apple’s in-app purchasing rules within Fortnite. While Apple defeated nine out of ten antitrust claims in the initial 2021 trial, it lost on its “anti-steering” rules.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered Apple to stop blocking developers from providing links to external payment methods.

Following that original injunction, Apple changed its policies to allow external links, but it attached a catch. It implemented a 12% to 27% commission on any purchases completed through those external links. Epic Games quickly challenged this move, arguing it was a bad-faith workaround designed to make alternative payments economically unviable.

In April 2025, Judge Gonzalez Rogers sided with Epic, finding Apple in civil contempt for willfully violating the injunction. As a penalty, she banned Apple from collecting any commissions on external link-outs in the U.S. App Store. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld the contempt finding, though it noted Apple should eventually be allowed to charge a reasonable fee for its intellectual property.

In its Supreme Court filing, Apple challenges the core legal logic used to convict it of contempt. The company points out that the original 2021 injunction never explicitly banned it from charging a commission on external transactions.

Apple argues that the lower courts based the contempt ruling on the amorphous “spirit” of the injunction rather than the literal text. According to Apple, civil contempt should only apply when a clear and unambiguous order is directly violated.

Apple further argues that since Epic Games brought the lawsuit on its own behalf, the resulting rules should only apply to Epic Games. Instead, the current court order forces Apple to alter its rules for every single developer on the U.S. App Store storefront.