Apple filed its opening brief in Apple Inc. v. Epic Games at the Supreme Court on September 14, and it rests on one point: the 75-word injunction behind the contempt finding never mentioned commissions. Apple wants the justices to rule that a court can’t hold a party in contempt for violating an order’s “spirit,” and to throw out the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, including its guidance on what Apple may charge when an app sends you to the web to pay.
Epic’s brief is due November 13. In the meantime, the lower-court process meant to settle a US link-out fee is stalled at an early step, because Epic’s 60-day clock to respond there hasn’t started.
The question before the Court
The Court agreed on June 30 to hear the case, limited to one question: whether contempt can rest on an injunction’s “spirit” when the order is silent about the conduct, or whether it must rest on an order that “clearly and unambiguously proscribes the precise conduct at issue.” Apple isn’t asking the Court to approve its fees. It’s asking the Court to say the contempt finding used the wrong legal test.
Don’t miss the best of The Mac Observer
Set us as a preferred source and our Apple reporting ranks higher in your Google Search results and Discover feed — one tap, no account changes.
Apple’s argument
The injunction barred Apple from prohibiting “buttons, external links, or other calls to action” that point to other ways to pay. Apple says it complied, replacing the old anti-steering guidelines with new ones that allow those links. What it added was a commission on purchases made through them.
The brief quotes the Ninth Circuit’s own footnote, which says the “[i]njunction does not address commissions at all,” and Epic’s contempt motion, which admitted the injunction “did not explicitly prohibit” the new fee.
Supreme Court precedent, Apple argues, including Taggart v. Lorenzen (2019), allows civil contempt only when there is no “fair ground of doubt” that an order forbade the conduct. It calls the Ninth Circuit’s standard an “outlier, spirit-based rule” and “a recipe for doubt.” If an injunction proves inadequate, the brief says, a court can modify it going forward after “notice and an opportunity to be heard,” rather than punishing a party for terms the order never contained.
The fee numbers
The figures in the brief:
| Item | What the brief says |
|---|---|
| Standard App Store commission | 15-30%, depending on the developer and transaction |
| Apple’s 2024 link-out commission | Between 12% and 27%, only on purchases within seven days of tapping an in-app link |
| Apple’s forecast effective rate | “Around 18 percent,” because of the seven-day window |
| District court contempt order, April 30, 2025 | Barred Apple from “[i]mposing any commission” on link-out purchases |
| Ninth Circuit guidance, December 11, 2025 | A commission based on costs “genuinely and reasonably necessary” for coordinating external links, “but no more” |
The district court also referred the matter to federal prosecutors to consider criminal proceedings against Apple and one executive. The Ninth Circuit reversed the outright ban on any link-out commission but upheld the contempt finding. Apple calls its cost-based limit “draconian” and says it can only be read as an outgrowth of the contempt ruling.
What Apple wants
The brief’s conclusion is one sentence: “The Ninth Circuit’s decision should be reversed.” At a minimum, Apple asks the Court to vacate the contempt ruling in full, including the instructions “regarding an appropriate commission or fee limitation on remand.” It doesn’t say what US App Store rules would look like afterward.
What happens next, and when
Supreme Court. The docket sets Epic’s brief for November 13, under an extension granted July 23. Supreme Court Rule 37.3 gives friend-of-the-court briefs 7 days after the brief of the party they support, which by our count means about September 21 for Apple’s supporters and about November 20 for Epic’s. Those dates come from the rule, not the docket. No argument date has been set, and argument is unlikely before 2027.
District court. Justice Elena Kagan denied Apple’s request to pause the Oakland proceedings on August 13, so they continue while the appeal is pending. Apple filed its proffer on August 13 under a May 20 order, and had to hand Epic the documents behind its proposal, “including any fee proposal.” Epic then has 60 days to respond, counted from the later of the proffer or the end of Apple’s document production.
That clock hasn’t started. In a September 10 status report, the parties told Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers they “agree that Epic’s 60-day deadline under the May 20 Order has not yet begun to run,” and that they are still conferring about the scope of Apple’s production. They plan to update the court two weeks after that report, which works out to about September 24.
The two tracks are tied together. In Oakland, Apple’s document production is still being worked out before anyone argues over a specific US fee, and the Ninth Circuit guidance that work follows is exactly what Apple is asking the justices to vacate.
