Apple plans to ask SCOTUS to revisit an Epic case ruling that Apple cannot stop developers from providing links in apps to payment options outside the App Store
Context & Ripple Effects
The planned Supreme Court petition follows the trial judge’s refusal to pause the requirement that developers be allowed to direct users beyond the App Store, captured in the 2021 denial of Apple’s stay request. It puts the scope of Apple’s control over payment-related app links at the center of the Epic dispute.
The issue remained consequential enough for both sides to pursue Supreme Court review later in 2023, before the Court ultimately declined both appeals in 2024.
First-order effects
- Apple moves the anti-steering dispute into a Supreme Court petition strategy, while developers face continued uncertainty over how prominently and freely they may present external-payment links.
- Unless a court pauses or changes the order, Apple must plan App Store compliance around the existing restriction rather than treat a prospective appeal as a rule change.
Second-order effects
- Developers and payment providers gain a stronger incentive to build and test external checkout paths, while Apple has an incentive to define app-review and disclosure rules tightly around any permitted links.
- The case gives other platform operators a closely watched legal reference point for whether restrictions on directing users to off-platform payment options can withstand challenge.
Third-order effects
- If anti-steering remedies continue to survive appeals, competition over digital-goods transactions can shift from control of the in-app checkout button toward control of discovery, interface rules, and payment conversion.
- The broader policy question becomes less whether a platform may operate its own payment system and more how far it may use app-distribution rules to shield that system from alternatives.
The trend: This is one data point in the longer contest over whether dominant app-distribution platforms can preserve payment control through rules that limit users’ paths to outside transactions.