A US district judge has found Apple willfully violated an injunction in the Epic Games case, saying the company continued to interfere with competition in ways the court would not tolerate.
The ruling sharpened an already bitter fight over App Store rules, third-party payments and Apple’s control of in-app commerce. The BBC report says Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers concluded that Apple deliberately chose the most anti-competitive option at several points after the court had ordered it to open the door to more competition. The judge also referred the matter to the US attorney for the Northern District of California to consider whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.
The event date is May 1, 2025, but the dispute began years earlier. In 2021, the court ordered Apple to allow greater competition and to stop blocking developers from directing users to outside payment options. That original injunction was central to Epic Games’ argument that Apple’s App Store model was too restrictive and that the company’s commission structure unfairly limited how customers could buy digital goods and services.
According to the BBC report, the judge said internal documents showed Apple knew exactly what it was doing and repeatedly chose the most anti-competitive path. She said CEO Tim Cook ignored an executive who urged compliance and instead allowed other senior leaders to persuade him not to comply with the injunction. The court also said vice-president of finance Alex Roman outright lied under oath.
The substance of the case matters because it is not just about a single software rule. It is about whether Apple can continue to control how transactions happen inside its ecosystem after being ordered not to block rival payment channels. The injunction had been intended to prevent anti-competitive conduct and pricing, including restrictions on developers linking users to their own purchasing mechanisms. The report notes that one example would allow a streaming service to send customers to its own website instead of forcing the purchase through Apple’s in-app system.
The judge’s contempt order focused on specific conduct. One example cited was Apple’s decision to charge a 27% commission on off-app purchases, even though it had previously charged nothing for those transactions. The court also said Apple imposed new barriers and requirements that discouraged customers from using competing platforms. That is important because it suggests the disagreement is not merely philosophical: the judge believed the company built new obstacles after being told to step back.
Epic Games’ public response signalled that the legal fight could now spill back into product access. Founder and chief executive Tim Sweeney said the company would return Fortnite to the US iOS App Store the following week and floated the idea of ending litigation if Apple extended the same framework more broadly. That response indicates the ruling may have immediate consequences for one of the world’s most visible games, not just for abstract competition law.
Apple said it strongly disagreed with the decision and would appeal. That means the dispute is far from over. But the judge’s finding of willful violation and the referral for possible criminal contempt raise the stakes considerably, turning a long-running antitrust-style argument into a direct accusation that Apple disregarded a federal court order.
For Apple, the risk is legal and reputational. For Epic, the ruling is a fresh opportunity to argue that Apple’s control of the App Store is not just commercially aggressive but legally defiant. For everyone else in the digital economy, it is another sign that courts are becoming less willing to accept platform control as a neutral design choice when it appears to restrict competition.
