Apple asks court to delay app store changes until appeals in Fortnite lawsuit are concluded

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On Friday, the company filed a petition with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California asking it to stay a September 10 injunction in a lawsuit against Apple by video game company Epic Games.
The injunction, which is currently scheduled to come into force on December 9, stipulates that Apple (AAPL) can no longer prohibit developers from adding links in their applications to external payment options; for example, alerting users to the possibility of paying for a subscription on a web browser, rather than through the app.

Apple is asking the court to suspend this requirement by November, weeks before the deadline it will be required to make the changes to the App Store requirements. The request accompanied Apple’s formal appeal against the September ruling.

Apple denies Fortnite a return to the App Store
This is the latest step in a long legal battle between Apple and Epic Games, the maker of the hugely popular Fortnite video game.

In September, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers sided with Apple on most of the allegations in the lawsuit, saying she couldn’t find the iPhone maker to be a monopoly. But she sided with Epic on one point: Apple can’t stop app makers from telling their users that there are ways to pay outside of the App Store. Apple is reducing most in-app transactions on its devices by up to 30%.

Epic appealed the decision days after its announcement, and the disagreements between the companies have only become more controversial since then.

Apple announced shortly after the decision that it would not allow Fortnite to revert to its devices until the appeal process is complete, meaning the game could be banned from iPhones for several years.

If Gonzalez Rogers grants Apple’s final request, it could save the company similar time to avoid having to make changes to the App Store.

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