Why Epic Games' Federal Court win could be its biggest legal victory to date
A pivotal tweak to Australia’s competition rules in 2017 underpinned Epic’s Federal Court triumph over Apple and Google this week.
A combination of greed and 2017 changes to competition laws was behind this week’s landmark Epic Games decision in the Federal Court.
Tech giants Apple and Google were found to have engaged in anti-competitive behaviour with their app stores, the latest in a run of similar cases in courts across the globe.
Epic, with the support of smaller app developers, argued that take-out fees of up to 30% make it uneconomic for some new developers — and belong to the bricks-and-mortar days of software retailing.
It’s been a winning argument, but it was helped along in Australia by a key change to the Competition and Consumer Act in 2017. A “substantial lessening of competition” effects test removed the need to establish a predatory or anti-competitive purpose.
