The display of the App Store Google/Epic Games is issued before the Court of Appeal | Deanbit

This week we had a rare view in the legal world of antitrust and its implementation in the game industry. Google appeals its loss In an antitrust test as Epic games He convinced the Federal Court that Google had illegally acted as a monopolist by limiting Epic’s access to Android users.

Google has now brought the case to the US Appeal Court and is trying to get the funds that the epic games have won. The two sides argued in front of a staff of three federal judges in San Francisco.

The case began in 2020 when Epic Games filed lawsuits against Apple and Google the same day after removing Fortnite from their stores after Epic tried to allow users to download Fortnite or buy Fortnite goods through their smartphones Apple and Google based on Google from directly in the Epic Games app. Apple won the antitrust level court process while Google lost.

I also had the opportunity to hear developers from Google funded Developer Alliance This week, as they talked about the arguments they had about the remedies and how they could harm their business. It was a rare chance to hear from some of the countries – guerrillas on behalf of Google – express their perspectives as described in detail in Letter amicus Filed in favor of Google. Google is also confronted with difficult means of administration in the trial of antitrust childhood execution. They noted that something Apple and Google were repeatedly resurrected – that security concerns meant that Epic should not easily be allowed to “load” Fortnite on the user’s phones because it introduces security risks. Epic claims that its security is good and it is an attempt to create friction or does not allow users to deviate from the Google Play store.

In this case, I believe Apple won against Epic Games partly because it was a monolithic company. Apple can decide its own policies for its store and also apply the policies to the phones it makes. However, Google did not have such control over the entire ecosystem. He had to convince manufacturers of phones such as Samsung to accept Android and use the Google Play Store. But it was there that he was in antitrust problems with a real trace of evidence.

Epic Games claims Google paid Samsung to make the Google Play Store at the Samsung’s default store and hold others like the Epic Games Store. The epic games called witnesses who were former Google employees and they confirmed that it was Google’s intention to sign these contracts. As Google pays to save Epic and other Android smartphones and this probably hurt consumers in the form of higher prices, the jury has found that Google is violating antitrust law.

I listened to the arguments before the court above the live. A three -judge panel heard arguments on both sides for two hours and signals that they look skeptical of Google’s attractiveness.

Epic Games claims that Google monopolizes the way user access and pay for apps on Android devices. In 2023, the jury concluded that Google was illegally blocking competition and a judge in his case ordered the Google Play store to change the store. Google is attractive. In the meantime, Epic Games has lost all its claims against Apple in a similar antitrust case, gaining only one question from developers’ right to advertise more prices in alternative app stores within their applications applications. Google agreed to pay consumers $ 700 million and make changes in response to a case by state lawyers on play store practices.

Hogan Lovells US lawyer Jessica Elsworth was Google. She claims that Apple’s victory against Epic Games should result in a return result in Google’s case.

Jessica Elsworth for Google claims that Google and Apple are cruel competitors and that this should be taken into account when Epic Games claims to be monopolists. She claims that Apple’s App Store, Google Play Store and other Android stores compete for market mobile games that underlies competitiveness. And she noted that Apple won while Google lost.

“You can’t just lose a problem that is completely controversial for the first time and then pretend that this has not happened and try to get a different result against a different opponent,” Elsworth said, hinting that this is what this is what this is what this is what this is what this is what it is made Epic when he lost to Apple and then won against Google. The discussion focuses on whether Apple’s case is “precise”, where Apple’s victory against Epic has to turn off the epic victory over Google. A judge asked Elsworth if he believed that the second process was not supposed to be conducted at all.

Elsworth also claims that the judge in the Google process, US District Judge James Donato, has failed to instruct the jurors for what it takes to prove how the defendants are dealing with the sales of after sales until she said that she said that Apple’s jury has received such instructions.

“The same products must be subject to the same governing legal framework,” she said.

Judge Daniel Joe Forrest said he should stand alone in every case. In the case of Apple, Google claims that the judge told the jurors to find out what the relevant market for the use of antitrust applications is. Google suggested that if instructed to do so in its case, the jury would have found in a similar way that Google did not have a monopoly in the relevant market. The judge asked if the instructions were a reason to discard the jury’s conclusion.

“What we say is that the jurors have not received the right instructions on what the standard is to find the after -sales market and therefore it has not been instructed correctly, it is assumed to be prejudiced,” says Elsworth, Google’s lawyer. “We know that it was prejudiced here because it is the same element of the antitrust claim. This is the reason why Epic’s offered markets, this approach that failed in the case of Apple. “

The judge replied that the comprehensive antitrust principle was that you accept any case of his facts. And there are “clear factual differences between the world of Android and the Apple world.”

Judge Gabriel Sanchez also said he was experiencing difficulties with the argument that companies are somehow in the same position, although Apple makes phones while Google creates software.

The senior judge of the chain Margaret McCoon replied: “Just because they are players in the same market does not mean that Apple’s case is prevalent here.”

Gary Bournstein, a classroom disputes in Cravath, Swaine & Moore, talks about epic games. The lawyer indicated the differences between Apple’s phones and Google’s business model, where he does not sell devices but made transactions with Samsung likes.

“The problem is a prolonged slowdown in the alleviation of the market that has been suffering from anti -competitive behavior for a better part of a decade,” Bournstein said. “Sending him back to the district court to carry out the home task of writing an opinion is completely unnecessary. And my friend made the comment earlier that there was a problem here because we have no findings regarding the definition of the market and findings about the competitive effects of the district court the way we did in the Apple case sufficient for this court to evaluate. And well, I quote the decision on liability, the jurors decide responsibility in cases of antitrust cases all the time. There is no reason why this court needs ”to review a responsibility decision.

He said there was no discrepancy between the two cases, as there were overlapping markets. Apple operates everything from making the phone to the creation of the app store on it. Google does not work the entire ecosystem and users behave with a different Android structure.

“In order to exclude, which is really the context in which this issue is presented before the court, there must be some real discrepancy so that the two results cannot be correct at the same time,” Bournstein said. “This is not true here. You can have overlapping markets, even if one accepts, just hypothetically for a moment that the find in Epic against Apple for the nature of the market is taken in stone, this would not be excluded as this would not be contrary to the existence of the markets , discovered by the jury. “

Bornstein disputes Google when claiming that the changes that Donato has ordered will cause great harm to consumer confidentiality and security. Epic Games CEO Tim Souini called the 15 steps needed to remove Fortnite on Android on Screen Screen.

Microsoft submitted brief information to support Epic Games as well as the Federal Trade Committee. David Lawrence, Director of Policy at the US Department of Antitae Division Department, argued in support of Epic’s victory.

“District courts have broad powers and discretion to develop funds for monopolization and when the law is violated, the drug should restore competition. Today we are most concerned that Google’s arguments threaten these principles on the basis. We would like to insist that this court does not accept the definite restrictions proposed by a lawyer here at a corrective judgment of the district courts, “Lawrence said. “We are concerned that these restrictions, if accepted, could prevent future courts from fulfilling their obligations under the law from restoring competition in monopolized markets.”

Lawrence said: “We have illegal behavior that affected the point of sale, whether competitive app stores were pre -loaded on Android phones. These Android phones are in the hands of millions of Americans today. Restoration of competition only through this alley can become more interventional. Charging the App is stored directly under the phones without the user wanting to interact with the point of sale in a truly intervented way. This court has found what we think is a very reasonable means of finding competition. At the app stores are already there by phone by the Google Play Store, and he said the customer wants to download a competitive app store, let him use this store for a limited time as needed to reopen the market of competition. “

The Court of Appeal is expected to rule this year and will probably be appealed to the US Supreme Court.