The future of the App Store depends on the difference between a “button” and an “external link”

Today the judge of Epic vs. Apple rendered a lengthy ruling that said Epic had failed to prove that Apple had a monopoly on mobile game transactions. Above all, the court too ruled that Apple’s rules preventing other payment options in the App Store were anti-competitive and issued an injunction telling Apple to remove them.

Specifically, the court said that “Apple engages in anti-competitive behavior” and that “Apple’s anti-management provisions hide critical information from consumers and illegally stifle consumer choice.”

To resolve this issue, the court issued the following permanent injunction prohibiting Apple from having rules against other payment systems. I have bolded the most relevant bit:

Apple Inc. and its officers, agents, servants, employees and any person in concert or active participation with them (“Apple”), are hereby permanently restricted and directed to prohibit developers (i) from including in their applications and their metadata buttons, external links or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition in-app purchases and (ii) communicate with customers through contact points voluntarily obtained from customers through account registration in the app.

This specific wording is taken directly from Apple App Store rule 3.1.1, which states that “applications and their metadata may not include buttons, external links or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchasing ”, so it is tempting to think that the judge has just declared this rule anti-competitive and struck it out.

But it’s a little more complicated than that – now that this text is in a court order, it no longer belongs to Apple or must be interpreted as Apple wants. Indeed, the court has made it clear that it will apply this rule and that if anyone thinks Apple is breaking it, they want to know. Again, my bolding:

The Court will retain jurisdiction over the execution and modification of the injunction. If any part of this Order is violated by a party named herein or by any other person, the plaintiff may, by motion with notice to the defendant’s attorneys, seek penalties or any other remedy which may be appropriate.

So now comes the really complicated part. What does this injunction mean for Apple and the App Store? Let’s break this rule down piece by piece – the difference between a “button” and an “external link” is going to be remarkably important here.

Apple is:

1. not allowed to prohibit developers from including in their applications and metadata
2. buttons
3. external links, or
4. other calls to action
5. that guide customers to purchasing mechanisms
6. in addition to in-app purchases.

We can make some versions of this phrase make sense very easily:

• Apple is not authorized to prohibit developers from including external links in their applications that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms.
• Apple is not allowed to prohibit developers from including calls to action in app metadata [like descriptions in the App Store] that guide customers to purchasing mechanisms.

But consider the following version of this sentence:

• Apple is not authorized to prohibit developers from including buttons in their applications that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms.

Well, shit. Here’s an example of a button that takes you to a buy mechanism in the Amazon app:

It’s the ball game! What does this mean for a button in an application to “guide a customer towards purchasing mechanisms”? Is it a payment button? Can Amazon now add a cart, checkout button, and payments to the Kindle app? The court is not stupid – he clarified buttons and external links, which means that they are presumed distinct. So a button can’t just be an external link that takes you to Safari.

This means that a fair reading of the plain text of this injunction suggests that buttons in iOS apps can direct users to shopping mechanisms. in the app – if the button takes you to the web, that would be an external link!

I have no doubts that many developers will be testing this language aggressively, and Apple will find itself developing new rules to protect its lucrative in-app shopping system from the competition. And I’m sure Apple will try to say that “button” just means what does something look like, while the developers will say that “button” means how something works. (There’s a lot of irony in that for Apple.)

But in the end, it won’t be up to Apple to decide what this order means – it will be in court. And that’s a sticky position to be in, because the court explicitly thinks the anti-leadership rule is very anti-competitive.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment on the difference between buttons and external links.