Alphabet, the Google parent company, failed to persuade a United States Appeals Court on Friday to freeze an order that forces it to implement wide reforms in its Play Application Store, while the company challenges the decision in a lawsuit filed by the video game manufacturer FortniteEpic Games.
The Court of Appeals of the 9th Circuit of the USA, based in San Francisco, rejected Google’s request to continue the suspension of the order, which requires the technological company to restore the competition allowing users to discharge rival application stores within its Play Store and make available to those competitors the Catalog of Play applications, among other reforms.
The Court of Appeals said that Google did not comply with the high standard necessary to keep the order waiting. Google still has up to 10 months to comply with some key provisions of the original precautionary measure and 30 days for others.
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The Court of Appeals indicated in a separate order that the Plenary of the Court would not review the appeal of Google. The company could request the intervention of the United States Supreme Court.
In a statement, Google expressed its disappointment for the ruling and pointed out that it is evaluating options to appeal to the Supreme Court. The company said that the underlying precautionary measure would harm the security and privacy of consumers.
For its part, the Epic Games CEO, Tim Sweeney, praised the order of the court in a publication on the X Social Network Platform, and said that developers and consumers will soon benefit from it.
In his 2020 demand, Epic Games accused Google of monopolizing the way in which consumers access applications on Android devices and make payments within apps. The company, based in Cary, North Carolina, convinced a jury in San Francisco in 2023 that Google had illegally stifled competition.
The federal district judge James Donato, in San Francisco, issued his order last year, forcing Google to restructure the Play Store. Google has denied having committed some crime.
Donato’s precautionary measure establishes that for three years, Google may not prohibit the use of payment methods within apps and should allow users to download platforms or Android application stores from competing third parties.
The order also restricts Google to make payments to device manufacturers to pre -install its application store and share the income generated by the Play Store with other app distributors.
When confirming the precautionary measure, a panel of the 9th circuit in July indicated that the file of the Epic case was “full of evidence that Google’s anti -competitive behavior consolidated its domain.”
In his presentation before the Court of Appeals on August 8, Google said that Donato’s measure was “unprecedented” and would already put Google his Apple competitor in unequal conditions.
Epic greatly lost a similar demand filed against Apple in 2020, in which it accused the company of monopolizing the distribution of apps and payments within them.
Google warned that, if the jury verdict and the order of Donato, Google and Apple would operate under different legal rules derived from two contradictory decisions of this court.
With Reuters information
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