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The US Supreme Court has rejected a bid by Google to halt an injunction forcing it to open up competition on its Play app store, ahead of a deadline later this month.
The court rejected an emergency request by Google to halt an injunction by a lower court which is set to go partially into effect on 22 October.
The move clears the way for the injunction, issued last year by US District Judge James Donato, to begin taking effect, forcing Google to allow app developers to include external links that allow users to bypass Google’s billing system.
Third-party payment systems
Another part of the injunction, due to come into force in July of next year, requires Google to allow users to download competing app stores from Google Play and to make Play’s catalogue available to competing stores.
A federal appeals court in July upheld Donato’s order.
Google has said it plans to file a full appeal to the Supreme Court by 27 October, which could see the case going before the top court if justices agree to consider it.
Epic Games filed the initial lawsuit in 2020 against Google over its app store policies, and won a jury trial in San Francisco in 2023. Google has denied wrongdoing.
In their ruling in July, a panel of federal judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said that the case against Google was “replete with evidence that Google’s anticompetitive conduct entrenched its dominance, causing the Play Store to benefit from network effects”.
On 24 September, in its emergency application to the Supreme Court, Google’s lawyers argued that Donato’s order would cause it to “incur immediate, substantial and unrecoverable expenses in modifying its products”.
App store rules
The changes could open the company and its users to security threats, including stolen data, blackmail and surveillance with “irrevocable, real-world consequences on users’ careers or personal lives”, Google claimed.
In response, Epic Games said that Google had unlawfully suppressed competition using an unlawfully maintained monopoly to make tens of billions of dollars from app developers and users, adding that the warnings of security threats were exaggerated.
Epic initiated the confrontation in 2018 when it included technology in its Fortnite mobile game to bypass Google’s payment system, which levies a significant surcharge on all transactions. Google later removed Fortnite from its app store for violating terms of use.
The game maker has been embroiled in a parallel legal case with Apple, under which Apple has been ordered to allow links to third-party payment methods without placing restrictions on such links or taking a percentage of third-party payments.
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