▲ | w10-1 4 days ago | |
The brief is not particularly compelling; it mostly assumes what it is trying to prove. It says:
In fact, the injunction is silent on the matter of fees for linking out.Similarly, the simplicity of the alternative world of just clicking a button fails to incorporate any additional risks (hence the "scare" screen). Courts generally permit companies to charge what they want. It may be justifiable to force alternative markets for something close to a monopoly, but it's not clear they can force the alternative to be cheaper. If you look at the table of authorities, it's basically Epic itself, and some 50+ year-old cases. There's just nothing really in support. Currently, a tiny, tiny percentage of very large developers make virtually all of the profits from selling Apple apps. Apple's 30% rate has been in place longer than most of them have existed, so there's been no surprise. Price discrimination is legal, and Apple's choice to make larger companies pay more seems supportive of small businesses. So there's not even a compelling argument that Apple's fees are evil; it's just that big, maximalist players see a way to get more profit. So yes, Apple fees limit profits for Y-combinator startups. The brief would have been more compelling had it listed the startups that were passed on due to the fees (rather than listing the successful ones). That's the only new data point in this argument, and would have been direct evidence of impact to small companies. But because the brief didn't make this argument factually, the court can fairly assume there are no such cases, and the brief may have done more damage than good to its cause. |