Apple filed a 12-page response to Epic Games’ attempt to have its Supreme Court petition dismissed, arguing that Epic’s own filing “confirms the need for review.”
Epic filed a 35-page opposition on June 4, 2026, urging the Supreme Court to reject Apple’s appeal. Apple’s response targets two central arguments put forward by Epic in this case.
On the issue of anti-direction, Apple claims that Epic misrepresents the scope of the injunction against it. According to Apple, the order only limited specific anti-management practices and did not address App Store commissions, making Epic’s framework an attempt to rewrite the decision rather than an accurate description of it.
The second dispute concerns a 2025 Supreme Court precedent, “Trump v. CASA, Inc.” Epic claims Apple is wrongly claiming an exemption. Apple responds that the previous ruling explicitly states that CASA “has no bearing” on antitrust cases, rendering Epic’s argument moot.
The filing is the latest exchange in a dispute dating back to 2020, when Epic deliberately sparked a conflict with Apple over App Store payment rules. Apple won the vast majority of the original lawsuit in 2021, but lost on anti-request, with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordering Apple to allow developers to connect to external payment options. Apple complied, but charged a 27% commission on linking transactions, leading few developers to adopt it.
In April 2025, Gonzalez Rogers found Apple in willful violation and barred it from charging a commission on external links. The judge also accused Apple’s vice president of finance, Alex Roman, of giving testimony “filled with misrepresentations and outright lies” about when Apple decided on the 27% fee, and referred Roman and Apple to federal prosecutors for a possible criminal contempt investigation. Apple dropped the link fee and appealed.
In December 2025, the Ninth Circuit agreed that Apple had violated the injunction, but remanded the case to the district court to determine a reasonable commission rate. Apple filed a petition with the Supreme Court in May, questioning whether the contempt finding was appropriate and whether the injunction should apply to all developers in the country rather than Epic.
An attempt to suspend the fee proceedings during this process was later reversed after Epic challenged it. Fortnite also returned to the global App Store in May, with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney declaring the start of the dispute’s “final battle.”
The Supreme Court has indicated that it could decide whether to accept Apple’s appeal as soon as June, although a final decision remains several months away anyway.
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