Apple's fight with Epic isn't really about Epic anymore, which is the whole point of Apple's new petition. It's about every other developer on the App Store. Microsoft, Spotify, and thousands of smaller publishers now get to skip Apple's payment system after a court told Apple to step aside.
Apple wants the Supreme Court to undo that. The dollars on the line run into the billions.
The court ordered Apple to let app developers link out to other payment options, which Apple did - and then charged a 27% fee on those outside purchases anyway. The Ninth Circuit called that civil contempt, which is a court's way of saying you broke the spirit of the order.
Apple says it didn't. The original injunction never spelled out a rule on fees, so Apple thinks it stayed inside the lines.
That's the legal hook for the new petition. Apple's argument is you can't hold a company in contempt for violating an order that left room for reading.
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Apple's new argument has a clever piece tucked inside it. Epic never made this a class action, which Apple is using to ask why every developer should get the same relief Epic got.
In Apple's own words, Epic "never attempted to show that enjoining Apple's conduct against all other developers - like Microsoft or Spotify, who have nothing to do with Epic - was somehow necessary to provide relief to Epic." Translation: keep Epic out of the fee system if you have to, but leave the rest of us alone.
That framing is what makes this story bigger than one game maker. If Apple wins this point, it could keep its full payment cut from the biggest names on the App Store while only Epic walks away with the discount.
The same fight is playing out on Apple's other legal and product fronts, where the company keeps trying to lock down its ecosystem while regulators pull in the other direction.
The Supreme Court already turned Apple down once this month when it asked to pause the proceedings, according to recent court filings. Epic called the new petition "one last Hail Mary."
Fortnite returned to the App Store globally this week, except in Australia. Apple has the cash to drag this out for years, and five years in there's still no end in sight.
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