Apple has filed an appeal of the verdict in its landmark trial against Epic, with potentially billions of dollars and some control over the App Store at stake. While Apple won the case largely (the company went so far as to call the ruling a “resounding victory”), with Judge Gonzalez Rogers ruling in favor of Apple in nine of the ten claims Epic brought against the company, the company did lose in one important way: the judge found that Apple violated California’s anti-steering rules, and demanded that Apple allow developers to link to outside payment systems. That policy would have taken effect in December, but it may be extended beyond that date – and that appears to be the point.
As part of the appeal, Apple is asking for a stay to prevent the company from having to implement the new anti-steering rules, arguing that it “will allow Apple to protect consumers and safeguard its platform while the company works through the complex and rapidly evolving legal, technological, and economic issues.” And the company’s arguments there are pretty revealing if we’re reading the document right.
For example, Apple claims that the new anti-steering rule is unnecessary because the company agreed to delete the offending section of its App Store Guidelines in the Cameron v. Apple settlement, but that’s not true: at the time, Apple only agreed to “clarify” that app developers could communicate with consenting customers but not link to outside payment systems. That clarification was often regarded as a red herring by developers. At the time, Apple made no mention of completely removing a section of its App Store Guidelines.
It also appears that, contrary to what some Apple pundits have said, Apple is actually concerned that the court ruling will force them to open up the App Store to rival payment systems. A button might, in fact, be a button:
Links and buttons to alternate payment mechanisms are fraught with risk. Users who click on a payment link embedded in an app—particularly one distributed through the curated App Store—will expect to be led to a webpage where they can securely provide their payment information, email address, or other personal information.
Apple goes on to argue that if it were forced to allow app developers to link to external payment systems, it wouldn’t be able to protect users from fraud:
While Apple could examine the links in the version of the app submitted for review, there is nothing stopping a developer from changing the landing point for that link or altering the content of the destination webpage. Additionally, Apple currently has no ability to determine whether a user who clicks on an external link actually received the products or features she paid for. Apple already receives hundreds of thousands of reports each day from users, and allowing links to external payment options would only increase this burden. In essence, the introduction of external payment links, particularly without sufficient time to test and evaluate the security implications, will lead to the very same security concerns that Apple combats with the use of IAP more generally, which the Court agreed were legitimate, procompetitive reasons for the design of the App Store.
There are other unanswered questions regarding how successfully Apple protects App Store consumers – it was only last week that the company implemented a function that allows users to simply report blatant App Store scams.
