Epic battle latest: Judge reminds Apple it has 30 days to let apps link out to non-Apple payment systems Apple must allow apps in its iOS store to direct users to outside payment systems within the next 30 days, a federal judge in northern California reminded the super-corporation this week. The iPhone giant emerged mostly unscathed from its ongoing legal war with Epic Games; Apple won nine out of ten counts brought against it by …
When has there been a court judgement recently regarding some huge tech giant where they haven't appealed against it and dragged it out for years, even when often in the end the result is the same?
In UK law if you appeal a criminal conviction and your appeal is deemed to be without merit the appeals court can null any time already served on the sentence, effectively starting the sentence again. This is done to try and stop people just appealing for the sake of it on the hope they might get a reduced sentence and clogging up the court system with appeals.
I think a similar process needs to be brought in for these civil cases, if you appeal and appeal and the end result is the same as the lower courts judgement then you should have to pay double any fines originally imposed for every day you have clogged up the courts since the original judgement.
The easiest way to deal with this is to enforce the judgement until such time as the appeal is heard. It seems to be standard practice in civil cases (at least where big tech companies are concerned) to appeal and appeal again to higher courts in order to try to delay the imposition of the original judgement. Sometimes it seems the court delays the imposition until the appeal is heard sometimes they do not. It should be consistent that the imposition of the ruling is never deferred pending an appeal.
If the judgement is a financial penalty or damages then it should be the case that the money is paid in full, including legal fees, but held in some sort of trust until the appeal is heard.
Appeals courts should also have the power to impose an even stricter judgement should the appeal fail.
There are many cases where you really really want a stay until the appeal is heard.
If a someone can get a win against their competitor in a lower court and convince the court of an injunction/massive fine (such as in a copyright or patent claim) then that may be enough to drive the competitor out of business.
The competitor may have no revenue coming in until the time the appeal(s) are all eventually heard, even if the appeal is ultimately successful (due to support from better lawyers/experts) it would be too late as the damage is done.
In the United States, many politicians are former lawyers. It is not in the financial interests of lawyers to have a speedy resolution to a trial. Reform will never happen.
The result is the rich and big business can use the courts to ruin another person. If a rich person wants to silence another person, he can sue. The victim -- the person the rich does not like -- will have to pay for lawyers with his own money. Even if the rich person loses in court, he still wins. The rich person can keep dragging this out until the victim is ruined financially. Big business can do the same. Apple can afford to drag this out forever, hoping that their victim business will be forced into bankruptcy and no longer able to mount a defense. I think that is Apple's goal here: To bankrupt Epic.
> By using these external providers, developers could potentially avoid paying fees to Apple. We note that the iTitan could adjust or clarify its App Store fine-print to demand a cut from outside transactions.
Or they could charge Epic et.al. a flat fee per purchased game, or charge Epic by any metric Apple though suitable.
However, Apple and Google will have a harder time setting a common price without appearing to be conspiring in anti-competitive behavior.
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