Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) has beaten Fortnite developer Epic Games in a US court dispute over restrictions on IOS devices which ensure payments are made through its own App Store tool.
Epic Games had accused the tech giant of trouncing competition through its App Store, but saw nine out of ten of its appeals to earlier rulings thrown out in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday.
“Today’s decision reaffirms Apple’s resounding victory in this case,” Apple said in a statement, “[the] federal court has ruled that Apple abides by antitrust laws at the state and federal levels.”
Epic claimed a minor victory though, as the court rejected a ruling allowing Apple to prevent developers from telling users of other ways to pay for in-app purchases while taking a 30% cut from transactions.
“Fortunately, [this] frees iOS developers to send consumers to the web to do business with them directly there,” Epic Games responded, “we're working on next steps.”
Epic originally sued Apple in 2020 prior to deliberately violating App Store terms over in-app purchases, which resulted in Fortnite being removed from the store.