Apple is facing mounting legal trouble after a federal judge issued an order demanding the company explain its refusal to comply with a court injunction stemming from its high-profile antitrust dispute with Epic Games. You have to obey orders.
In a sharply worded order issued on Monday, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers directed Apple to appear in court and justify why it should not face sanctions for allegedly violating the 2021 injunction that required it to ease App Store restrictions on third-party developers. “Obviously, Apple is fully capable of resolving this issue without further briefing or a hearing,” the judge wrote.
The order, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, demands that an Apple official “personally responsible for ensuring cAccording to Judge Rogers, Apple has failed to honor the terms of that ruling and continued to impose conditions on developers that undermine the court’s intent. “This is an injunction, not a negotiation,” she wrote in a separate ruling last week. “There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order.”ompliance” appear in court on May 27 “if the parties do not file a joint notice that this issue is resolved…”
“Internally, Philip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction,” Rogers wrote. “But Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly. Rogers also accused Apple’s vice president of finance, Alex Roman, of lying under oath during the trial. “To hide the truth… Roman… outright lied under oath,” she wrote, adding that Apple “adopted the lies and misrepresentations to this Court.”
The judge’s latest order gives Apple until Wednesday to file a response explaining why Epic’s motion to enforce the injunction should not be granted. Any reply from Epic must be submitted. If the parties do not reach a resolution and fail to jointly notify the court, the Apple official named in the filing must attend the hearing in person at the Oakland federal courthouse.