Google is appealing in epic case set for February 2025

Losing the epic lawsuit last December, a district judge in October introduced a series of changes to Google Play. It was put on hold to allow the appeals process to play out, and Google today filed its opening case in a higher court.

Oral arguments before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will take place on February 3. Google has today outlined its case as to why “the liability judgment should be overturned.”

• “…the district court allowed Epic to argue that Google and Apple do not compete in the app distribution and in-app billing markets, even though Epic has already fully litigated and lost this issue in its case against Apple.”

Google also argues that “the injunction should be lifted.” These are the series of changes that the district judge imposed, including allowing third-party app stores in Google Play, catalog access and more for a period of three years.

• “…it requires Google to build new infrastructure to provide new services to Google’s competitors, which violates a well-established antitrust principle: Companies generally have no duty to do business with competitors, much less design new products to support theirs competitors”
• “… The district court’s injunction exceeds the remedies Epic proposed without any explanation as to why this was necessary.”
• “Nor did the Court ever explain why it is in the public interest to impose additional remedies beyond those agreed upon by the attorneys general of all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and two territories.”
  • Context: In December 2023, Google settled a lawsuit from states over the Play Store. It agreed to pay $700 million, simplify the sideloading process and more.
• “And the court failed to grapple with the significant security risks that linkouts, catalog access, and app-store distribution pose to millions of non-party consumers. Finally, the court ignored the impact of catalog access on the intellectual property interests of Play’s over half a million developers.”

Google shared “Key extractwhile the full opening brief was filed today can be read here.