App Store Commission Rules Face Supreme Court Review Over Scope
What You Need to Know
- Apple petitions Supreme Court on whether contempt order binds all App Store developers, not just Epic.
- Apple argues injunction addressed user communication about payment options, not App Store commissions broadly.
- Apple charged 27% commission on external transactions after injunction, leading to contempt finding and criminal referral.
- Ninth Circuit confirmed violation but remanded case to set reasonable commission rate instead of zero.
Apple’s Supreme Court petition over the Epic dispute has drawn less attention than the contempt finding that triggered it, but the legal question Apple is actually asking the court to decide is narrower and more interesting than the headlines suggest. Apple is not asking the court to revisit whether it violated the injunction. It is asking whether a contempt order can bind every developer on the App Store, not just Epic, and whether the process that produced the contempt finding was procedurally sound.
The 12-page reply filing targets two specific arguments Epic made in its June opposition. On anti-steering, Apple says Epic is describing the injunction as covering App Store commissions broadly, when the original order only addressed how Apple communicated external payment options to users. On the Trump v. CASA precedent, Apple points to language in that ruling explicitly carving out antitrust cases, which makes Epic’s argument that Apple is misapplying it largely self-defeating.
The backstory matters here. Apple charged a 27% commission on link-out transactions after the original injunction, a rate high enough that almost no developers used the external payment path. Judge Gonzalez Rogers concluded that was intentional obstruction, referred Apple and finance VP Alex Roman to federal prosecutors for potential criminal contempt, and then barred Apple from charging any commission on external links at all.
What the Ninth Circuit left unresolved
The Ninth Circuit confirmed the violation in December 2025 but sent the case back to district court to set a reasonable commission rate rather than zero. That creates an odd situation where App Store commission structures remain genuinely unsettled even if the Supreme Court declines to hear Apple’s appeal.
Fortnite returned to the App Store in May alongside Apple’s petition, with Tim Sweeney calling it the start of the “final battle.” The Supreme Court could decide whether to accept the case as early as this month, though a ruling on the merits, if it takes the case, would arrive well into 2027.
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